


Neighborly

by thelma_throwaway



Series: Let’s Get Modern (AU) [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, Childhood Friends, Drinking, F/M, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Neighbors, Sasuke the Ex, Slow Burn, Summer Love, Won't You Be My Neighbor, squad goals, will they won't they
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:48:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24251593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelma_throwaway/pseuds/thelma_throwaway
Summary: Sakura’s new neighbor may be determined to drive her out of her mind but she’ll be damned if he drives her out of her house. Or her pants.Modern AU {Rating for last chapter-- rest of is just M}
Relationships: A brief mystery pairing yet to be revealed???, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi
Series: Let’s Get Modern (AU) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778176
Comments: 277
Kudos: 482





	1. A Truth Universally Acknowledged

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time in well over a decade writing for this fandom. Its kind of sweet and easy to write something breezy like this when times are so heavy. I've been enjoying the many AUs for this pairing, which inspired all the speculation in this chapter-- he's a chef she's his assistant, he's a ne'erdowell she's his dogwalker, he's a yoga teacher she's a kickbox instructor etc. etc. 
> 
> Anyway, please bear with me. This is just a little escapism within some escapism.
> 
> NOTE: If you want to skip straight to the main smut... you can go to the last chapter. I promise there is a ton of steamy build up you'll want to read but if you want to fast forward it will still make sense.

The first warning was the boxes. There were about thirty of them in various states of decay, some with crumpled corners or ripped sides. All of them marked “Important” or “Library”, and all of them left on the sidewalk in such a way that she’s forced to move them to the porch across the way just to get in and out of her gate. Every day for a week she’d come home to find another two or three heavy, decrepit boxes in her path.

Sakura had moved the first ones out of neighborly politeness. The last tenants had been a sweet older couple who’d invite her over for drinks in their tiny, well kept yard and ask her if she needed anything from the market before they went. So she assumes that the new neighbor was moving cross-country and their effects were coming a little at a time, and it would be a nice gesture to make sure none of it got rained on.

On the fourth day, she feels a telltale vein begin to throb in her forehead when she rounds the corner to see yet another haphazard stack on the sidewalk. On the fifth day, one of the boxes splits as she kicks it up the walkway and out tumble some paperback books.

“Shit,” she mumbles, shoving them back in without reading the titles. 

She gets home the next night in time to see a rusted moving truck hoist itself off the curb and trundle away. A young man leans out the passenger side window and waggles his eyebrows at her as it rumbles passed.

“Hey there bubblegum!” His lips quirked wolfishly around the toothpick held between his canines. She flips him off without a word.

Her friends are waiting for her on her front stoop, beers sweating in their hands and a grill glowing merrily despite the summer heat. 

“Maybe he’s a chef.” Tenten considers the stack of boxes on the opposite porch. They’ve been shifted just enough to get through the front door but now lean in a haphazard arch around the entrance. “And has a lot of kitchen gadgets--”

“And he’ll help carry your groceries and offer to cook for you,” finishes Ino, eyes shining. “He’ll seduce you with dinner and then give you  _ dessert _ . And then he’ll take you to all the best restaurants and name a dish after you and---

“Hmm.” Sakura picks at a mosquito bite on her ankle. “I think you’re getting carried away. Plus chefs have terrible hours. Those skewers done yet?”

The two crowded around the fire shake their heads. Each one grips a pair of tongs in their hand, refusing to cede control of the grill.

Hinata twists her fingers in thought. “So maybe he’s… maybe he’s an artist-- no, no canvasess. A photographer, or a---”

“Yes, he’s a photographer for sure! For Vogue.” Ino sighs in delight, spinning a fantasy. “ You’ll be his muse, he’ll fly you to Milan. This time next year--- giant foreheads, all the rage!”

“Hey--”

“What makes you so sure it's a man?” Shika puffs thoughtfully on a cigarette. 

“Because I haven’t seen a single suitcase or garment bag go in.” Ino pinches his leg and fans away the smoke.

“Jeez--- how long have you guys been here.” She examines the half melted ice in the cooler. 

“Long enough.” Sasuke flips over one of the meat skewers, parrying his rival griller's tongs from reversing it with a soft clang. “Naruto helped them move some stuff.”

“Just a T.V.” He says sheepishly and blocks Sasuke’s attempt at removing a slice of zucchini from the flame. “And a mattress. Sorry, I didn’t know we hated him!”

“What was the mattress like?” Ino taps her chin. “That’s important.”

“It’s not important.” Sakura blushes at the assumption, eyes studiously avoiding the unhappy twitch of Sasuke’s mouth. Still she can’t help but press the bruise a little and mumbles, “It’s a bad idea to date your neighbor.”

There’s a cough from Shika behind her and Ino smirks but the moment passes and with reliable gracelessness Naruto answers. “It looked comfy-- no stains.”

“Maybe he’s married?”

“No-- a bachelor.” Sasuke gestures to the sagging arch of boxes. He’s trying to be a sport. 

“True, it’s definitely the work of an unaccountable man.” Tenten hands out another round of beers.

“I think they’re all books.” Sakura tells them about the split box. 

“A professor maybe?”

Ino’s eyes go wide. “Oh that’s  _ good _ . He reads you poetry, you talk for hours over Turkish coffee. You make love on his desk. He dedicates a book to you! And on the day of the release party---a jealous co-ed appears, watch out! she’s got a --” 

“Yikes! You’re thinking about this too hard.” Shika claps a hand over her mouth. “Slow down before you get Sakura killed.” 

They pass around a plate of grilled kebabs and the topic turns mercifully from her neighbor’s means of seduction. Sasuke sits at her feet but holds his body tightly away from her. She studies the back of his neck and wonders if they’re playing it too cool too fast. Her phone buzzes. 

_ Trying to set my hair on fire? _

She texts back a middle finger and pokes him hard with the toe of her sneaker.

“Maybe he’s a professional clown,” Sasuke says casually. 

“Maybe he’s a serial killer and he’ll put me out of my misery tonight,” she snaps, crinkling flat the empty beer can in her fist.

“Maybe he’s into BDSM.” Hinata blushes deeply at her own suggestion. Naruto smiles and rubs his girlfriend’s knee as they burst into laughter. 

The light across the way flicks off, and there’s the rustling as a lanky figure coming out the front door. He locks it behind him, saunters through the front gate and down the walkway. 

“Hey man!” Naruto calls with a wave.

“Yo.” The new neighbor returns the greeting with a flick of his wrist but doesn’t stop to introduce himself.

“Rude,” Ino scoffs when he’s out of sight. “Hey--- now we can see what’s in those boxes!”

Once it’s decided things escalate quickly. Shika and Ino go to stand lookout at the end of the walkway, Sasuke watches the other direction while pretending to scrape the grill, and Naruto hops the fence and scrambles up onto the porch.

“Is this… bad?” Hinata grips Sakura’s arm.

“No--- I can already tell he’s going to be a pain in my ass. It’s preemptive payback.” 

In just a few strides, Naruto’s back on the steps with a wild, foxy grin on his face.

“More books.” Naruto says, breath heavy with triumph. “Lots of them. All like this.”

He hands Sakura the paperback and they all crowd in, even Sasuke with his hand absentmindedly balanced on her leg to get a closer look. “ _ Icha Icha… _ ”

She flips to a random page and yelps---- a double-page spread of a bubble chested hottie doing well… a double-page spread. 

“We were all right.” Shika yawns. “He’s a total fucking pervert.” 


	2. Frankly My Dear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don’t care?” She shakes her head. “How awful. How can you not care that you inconvenienced someone?”
> 
> “I started many years ago and it’s just become second nature.” Kakashi shrugs.

The next morning she spends some time puttering in the front yard, cleaning up cans and dumping the old charcoal. The stack of cardboard boxes had collapsed in the night, probably when her new neighbor had come home drunk and singing with one of his buddies at 4 a.m. She isn’t surprised that there’s no movement in the house.

She isn’t  _ trying _ to meet him. But she’s looking forward to sizing him up, maybe holding his noisy feet to the flame a bit for making her schlep his boxes. Maybe slip in a line about having a lending library’s worth of porn on his porch for anyone to see.

It’s a good thing she’s not waiting around. At 3 she leaves for work, slamming her front gate behind her petulantly and still no signs of life. It’s well past midnight when she finally gets home, and she sees two shadows moving in the windows across the street but no one comes out. 

By noon the next day she’s given up on the idea of meeting him and giving him a piece of her mind, given up on the idea of him being awake during the day entirely. Ino comes by to tan and gossip, pressing her for details about the unceremonious end to her relationship.

“You’re trying to get blood from a rock here,” she yawns. “There’s nothing else to know.”

“ _ Nothing _ ?” Ino scoffs. “I can’t believe it. That suave little psycho is always giving you just enough to hope. I  _ saw _ him texting you the other night.” 

“Nothing. We’re trying to be friends. We don’t want everyone to feel weird.”

“Well, that’s very mature of you but  _ I’m _ going to continue to hold a grudge.” 

“Thanks,” Sakura sighs, and she means it. 

As soon as Ino leaves, the door across the way flops open, toppling boxes and sending books skittering across the porch.

It’s the toothpick gnawing cromagnon who’d catcalled her from the moving van. He considers the mess for a moment before shrugging and burying his hands in his pockets.

“Great,” she mutters to herself as he ambles down the front walk.

“Morning, bubblegum!” 

“It’s almost two. Don’t tell me  _ you’re _ living here.” Sakura closes her eyes and leans against the porch rail, holding her arms out to tan the underside of her wrists. 

“Nah, but I like the neighborhood.” He smirks and chews his toothpick. “You haven’t met Hatake yet?”

“I’ve been denied the pleasure so far,” she says acidly. “Do you think he’ll wake up some time this century? I’d like to talk to him about a few things.”

Toothpick laughs and moves along the pathway towards the sidewalk. “I wouldn’t hold my breath. See ya around, bubblegum.”

Without really thinking, she scoops up a pebble and winges it at his retreating head. She watches him wince and look around, everywhere but at her. He shakes it off and walks away mumbling to himself.

She goes inside to make lunch and switch the laundry, then fixes herself an iced tea and goes back to the front yard with her book. A book where everyone was clothed the whole time. She lays out a bright yellow towel and stretches out, finding her page and sinking into the story. Time melts away under the sun. The book ends in an emotional crescendo, all the pieces fitting together at last, realizations flying left and right, well-made apologies shared between the main characters, and in the last few lines--- the promise of a kiss trailing off the page. She closes it with a sigh and lays her head on her folded arms. If only things could be so tidy. A clever heroine could get exactly what she wanted. 

“Yo.”

Shielding her eyes from the sun, Sakura peers up at the shadow leaning on her fence. It was the same figure she’d seen slouching around across the way-- a set of lanky, muscled arms arranged on the chainlink, a bandana wrapped around the lower half of his face, pretty eyes half covered by tousled grey hair. 

“I moved your boxes.”

“Call me Kakashi,” he replies as if she’s said something completely, eyes crinkling into a smile. 

“It was a real pain.” She frowns. “They were kind of in the way. Not very neighborly. Were you moving from far away?”

“No, just across town.” He’s still smiling pleasantly, leaning half over the fence 

“So there’s no excuse.” She rises up on an arm and gives him a once over, not even bothering to hide the frank way her head scans from head to toe and back again. He’s kind of hot, in an aging rocker way. Fit but skinny, thin t-shirt mottled with holes, the posture of a man with no obligations but getting regularly laid.  _ Otherwise known as a grade-A loser _ , says the voice in her head and it sounds like half a warning.  _ Your favorite kind _ . 

“Well, I do apologize, Miss--”

“Sakura.” She rolls her eyes. “And you’re laying it on a little thick.”

“Ahh.” Kakashi doesn’t seem phased at all.

“If you’re going to try and sweet talk me you’ll have to be a little more subtle.”

“I appreciate your frankness. If that’s the case, I’ll suspend the polite act all together.” He eyes crinkle even tighter in what she’s sure is a shit eating grin. “Thanks for carrying the boxes, but to be honest I don’t really care that I inconvenienced you.”

“You don’t _ care _ ?” She shakes her head. “How awful. How can you not care that you inconvenienced someone?”

“I started many years ago and it’s just become second nature.” Kakashi shrugs. “I didn’t even know you existed until just now, how can I feel badly about someone I don’t know doing something I didn’t ask them to do.”

“Well now you know I exist.” She rolls up into a sitting position and glares at him, palms pressing into her knees to stop herself from making fists. “And that you made my day harder for a whole week. And I had to move big heavy boxes by myself just to get into my own house.”

Kakashi considers the architecture. A long cement walkway stretching down a city block, little single-story bungalows lining the path, theirs being the last two before a short set of stairs to a back exit of the housing complex.

“Hmmm I guess I see how that could be annoying.” It isn’t an apology but he nods sagely as if he’s acknowledging a great tragedy. 

“I don’t like your friend, either.”

“My friend?” Now he at least looks puzzled, if not a little concerned. 

“Yeah the one with the toothpick.”

“Genma.”

“He keeps calling me bubblegum.” 

“That sounds right.” She feels the vein in her forehead twitch. 

“Tell him the next time he says it he’ll be singing soprano.”

“Duly noted. Any other complaints for me?”

Sakura stands and meets him at the fence. It’s the first time seeing him properly and she doesn’t mean to stand so close, but as soon as she steps towards him she feels this pull. Like he’s surrounded in a sandalwood scented forcefield drawing her in. She finds herself face to face with him, hands gripping the fence on either side of his elbows. Every alarm bell in her brain is flashing while she studies the outline of his lips underneath that absurd bandana as she decides how to respond.

“Don’t make so much noise when you come home late,” she says, meeting the bottomless look in his eye. 

Some muscle in his throat flexes but he nods. “Of course. I’ll try to be more  _ considerate  _ and neighborly in the future.”

The sun is starting to set and a field of goosebumps have raised up on her arms, though it's hard to know if it's the temperature or the unbroken focus of his gaze. He hasn’t looked away since they started talking, she realizes, and despite his casual pose, his energy is intense.

_ Maybe he  _ is _ a serial killer, _ she thinks.

Sakura sighs and pushes away from the face to gather up her towel and book. “You don’t have to lie to me. It was nice to meet you.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Sakura.” He calls to her as she climbs the front steps. “See you around.” 


	3. Hi-Neighbor!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don’t seem to like me much, Sakura-san,” he says brightly. “I don’t think I’ve made the right impression.”
> 
> “I think you’ve given me a very accurate impression--- that you’re lazy and inconsiderate.”

Over the next week, Kakashi is miraculously awake throughout the daylight hours, settling into the new house. Soon it looks like he’s been neglecting the home for years instead of a few days--- the front yard is strewn with work-out equipment, bicycle parts, a number of crushed Solo cups, and what she’s fairly certain is a deflated blow-up doll. He’s installed two half dead palm plants on the porch, along with a rattan chair and a fruit crate stood on its side as a table. 

And the boxes--- the boxes are still there, loose books cascading down the collapsed pyramid. 

He waves at her as she comes and goes, a cup of coffee in one hand and a smutty book draped over one knee.

“Hi, neighbor!” he says cheerfully each time, smirking under the black bandana. At first she guesses he’s wearing it to clean but since there’s no cleaning going on, she decides he’s doing it to look cool. And it bothers her. Deeply.

On Thursday evening Sakura comes up the walkway to find him watering a completely dead patch of grass at the fenceline. She acknowledges him with a tight smile, which he returns tenfold, a goofy grin pulling at the fabric over his face. 

“Yo.”.

“Hmmph,” she replies.

“You don’t seem to like me much, Sakura-san,” he says brightly. “I don’t think I’ve made the right impression.”

He lets the hose in his hand drop, flooding a patch of weeds and soaking the walkway. She takes a step to avoid the stream, finding herself one again in the sandalwood scented gravitational field of her new neighbor.  
  
“I think you’ve given me a very accurate impression--- that you’re lazy and inconsiderate.” She crosses her arms and sticks up her nose, trying to get a breath of fresh air before she melts completely into the haze of good-smelling man. Under the sandalwood is the faint musk of sweat that sends the animal parts of her brain spiralling. 

“Hmm.” Kakashi kinks the hose to stop the flow of water and sets it down on a scraggly patch of grass. “You keep saying that--- in-con-siderate. How would you like to be considered?”

A hot thread thrums through her. The words and tone are perfectly innocent, but something in the way he looks at her coupled with the intoxicating aura makes it sound like he’s asking how she’d like to be fucked. 

“Frequently,” she replies to both questions, hoping the blush on her neck isn’t visible. “And with open communication. If you’re going to have work done on the house on a weekend morning, if you’re having a party, if you have a delivery coming that’s going to block the walkway--- it would be common courtesy to tell me in advance.”

He rubs the back of his neck, the tail end of a black tattoo peeking under his shirtsleeve. “Can’t I give a blanket notice right now? In the future, I’ll be having work done on the house, throwing parties, and receiving deliveries that will likely block the walkway.” 

A vein in her forehead throbs and she swears he sees it because his smirk grows even wider under the bandana. “It doesn’t work like that,” she huffs. “Haven’t you ever had a neighbor before?”

“Not one who is so… rule bound. You’re quite serious for a young lady.” Kakashi picks up the hose again and resumes watering his non-existent lawn. 

Her forehead twitches again as she steps over the stream and through her front gate. “You’re wasting water.” 

The next night she comes home from work bone tired and ready to sleep like the dead. She’s begged off of the weekly cookout, this time at Sasuke’s new apartment. He’d found a reason to move out of the housing complex shortly after they’d broken up, someplace a lot nicer with full amenities and a beautiful deck overlooking the river. Ino had been texting her pictures all night, the promised grudge totally forgotten. 

DAMN. She wrote Sakura, followed by six star eyed emojis. Didn’t know Uchiha was loaded.

Lol, she replied, u can have him.

Ino replied with a selfie of herself flipping the bird, Sasuke sipping a glass of wine in the background, eyes slid towards some unidentifiable but definitely feminine shoulder halfway out of the frame. 

She’s feeling particularly pathetic tonight, worn out by the long evening shifts at the clinic and the emotional freefall of seeing your ex thriving unequivocally.

Ino had hit the nail on the head--- Sasuke is rich, well-educated, refined. She is scrappy, self-sufficient, and always just a little too plebeian for the situation. She grimaces at the memory of their first and only date at a fancy restaurant, the unhappy look on Sasuke’s face when a classmate had swanned over to their table.

“Sasuke-kun, we haven’t seen you since the yacht club gala,” the woman had tittered, swathed in an understated silk cocktail dress and a cloud of expensive perfume. She glanced pityingly at Sakura’s cotton sundress and barely tamed pink bob. “I see you’re doing a Pygmalion thing.” 

Later that night she’d looked up Pygmalion and sent a three letter text that took him a week to respond to--- WTF. Once she finally extracted an answer from him he insisted that he wasn’t looking for a project and he wasn’t looking for the perfect girl. 

“If I wanted some overdressed prep school sorority sister, I’d be dating one,” he’d said, not realizing the sting it would leave on. It confirmed everything she’d felt already, that she was an experiment in slumming it, just like moving in down the way had been an experiment in living among the riffraff. 

Her reality, the way she lived her life, everything that was important to her--- it was just a funny footnote on the way to his six figure salary and custom built mansion and trophy wife in an understated silk cocktail dress. She’d saved for a year and a half to put down first and last month’s rent on her little bungalow. He’d paid a deposit in cash on a whim, then broken his lease early just to get away from her. If he wanted a swanky life he could have it all in an instant, but she would never have it unless it was through him.

I’d rather be poor and proud, she tells herself. I’ll never have to wonder if I can take care of myself. 

She knows as soon as she mounts the little set of stairs at the end of the walkway that there’s a party at Kakashi’s house. In the few short steps it takes to get to her front gate she’s already shaking mad.

The front yard is packed with people, a boombox wedged into an open window blasting clanging, amelodic music over the chatter and laughter. Smoke from cigarettes and an unseen grille forms a grey cloud over the house, 

“Hey! Bubb---- Sakura!” Its Genma, eyes glassy and grin slack. He leans over the fence and waggles a beer can at her. “Come drink a beer with me.”

“No. Thanks.” She grits out. “I’m exhausted and a little ticked off.”

“What?” He practically yells as the track changes to some grinding, screaming deathmetal. “Is it the music?”

“Where’s. Kakashi,” she yells back. The crowd parts as if on command and her neighbor appears, accompanied by a cloud of funky smoke.   
  
“Sakura-san, you made it!” He laughs, passing a half-smoked joint to Genma. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I didn’t make it anywhere--- I live here in case you forgot.” She waves away the smoke and tosses her back pack into her own yard. “Kakashi. Do you not remember our conversation yesterday?”

“Yes, you said you wanted it frequently and with open communication,” he says somewhat proudly as Genma guffaws. 

“I distinctly remember asking you to tell me if you were going to have a party.” Her face and hands prickle with heat, palms flexing into fists. 

“Oh. Well.” He gestures lazily behind him. “I’m having a party. A house warming party. So won’t you do the neighborly thing, and come hang out?”

On a different night she might have said fuck it and joined them, drank someone else’s booze, sat on someone else’s lap. Forgotten that it was that ne'er do well Kakashi’s house and crowd and music. But tonight she feels equal parts hopeless and helpless and just slightly, illogically angry at her own friends for having fun without her. And mostly devastated by the shoulder Sasuke had been talking to. 

“You’re an absolute prick,” she snarls before turning on her heel. “Turn this awful fucking music off.”

She kicks open her gate and snatches the backpack off the ground and stomps to the front door without looking back. Still she can feel Kakashi’s eyes on her as she unlocks the door and slips inside, and unbidden the smell of sandalwood comes to mind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so probably expect a bunch of updates in the next couple of days as I furiously work through this plotline to get to the good stuff. I want to rush it but these two want to take their sweet time so--- let's see who wins.


	4. Nor A Lender Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve been thinking,” he repeats, again as if she’d said something totally different. “If we want to talk about inconsiderate. It was kind of inconsiderate of you boyfriend not to help you with those boxes.

The party lasts all night. Birds are chirping as the last voices call their goodbyes and straggle away. She’s been in and out of sleep, slowly killing a bottle of wine with a pillow held over her head to try and drown out the noise. She’s pretty sure at some point the cops were called and then the responding officers joined the party.

  
Dry-mouthed and gummy-eyed she makes a pot of coffee and waits while her phone recharges. The group chat is belatedly blowing up with love for her---  _ We missed you Saku! It's not a Friday night without you. If you don’t come next week we’re having an intervention _ .

And one from just Sasuke---  _ Sorry you couldn’t make it _ ,  _ we had fun _ . 

“I bet you and that shoulder had a blast,” she groans. She’s feeling deliciously self-loathing today. The red wine the night before had left her brain feeling sticky and dehydrated, the beginnings of an epic hangover roiling in her stomach. 

On the kitchen counter is the copy of  _ Icha Icha Hospital _ Naruto had pilfered from Kakashi’s porch. Sakura fills a mug with coffee and tips in a glug of cheap whiskey, takes her drink and the book to the front steps to bake in the sun.

The day is so bright and fresh she almost pukes on contact with morning air. She sips her drink and then rummages through the makeshift ashtray to find a half-smoked cigarette Shika’d left behind. She doesn’t normally smoke but it feels appropriately disgusting today.

She looks around for a stray lighter and stands to get a pack of matches from the kitchen when she hears a surprisingly perky, “Yo.”

“Need a light?” His hand is on the gate but she’s not ready to let him in. Something tells her if she lets him come through that front gate it would only be a matter of time before she’d find him on her couch, or worse--- in her bed. She takes her coffee and meets him at the fence.

“Smells good,” he says as he lights her cigarette. 

“There’s whiskey in it.” She doesn’t offer him a sip though his face lights up a little, just puffs her cigarette and tries to focus her eyes. He’s looking even more rumpled than usual, save for the bandana held impeccably in place over his nose and mouth. “I can’t believe you’re awake right now.”   
  
He shrugs, “I had an early night.”

“Are you kidding?” She ashes and watches it land on his foot. He doesn’t react, doesn’t take his eyes off her. “There were people here until 6 a.m.”

“Oh I went to bed  _ long _ before that.” He grins under the mask.

“So you just let your friends scream and dance to that horrible music all night, while you slept?”

“Well, kind of.” He scratches his chin, not realizing he’s digging himself deeper into the ground. 

“You’re unbelievable,” she snorts. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night because of your stupid party and you weren’t even  _ there _ ?”   
  
“Guess so.” He leans forward, filling her already fuzzy head with the smell of old smoke and spilled beer and musk and sandalwood. 

“I hate you,” she sighs, defeated. “I absolutely hate you. What could I have done to deserve someone like you as a neighbor.”

Kakashi’s door opens and slams shut behind him. A beautiful, leggy blonde of indeterminate age comes down the front path, wobbling slightly in a pair of stiletto heeled boots.

“Thanks for the party, ‘Kashi,” she giggles, trailing her nails along his shoulder as she walks towards the back entrance, wiggling her brows at Sakura as she goes.

“Anytime, uhh, um….”

“Early Night?” Sakura supplies. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he says suddenly, eyes still trained on hers. 

She realizes he didn’t even turn to say goodbye to the blonde as she’d left, his eyes had been on her the whole time. It was a little unnerving. She was wearing athletic shorts and a grungy t-shirt she’d gotten for free after eating a pound of chicken wings and she was sure her puffy face looked no better than her head felt. But he seemed like he’d rather look at her the bombshell he’d bedded the night before. 

“Oh?” She takes another sip of her coffee, letting the caffeine and liquor loosen the tightness in her chest. “I hope you didn’t hurt yourself too badly.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he repeats, again as if she’d said something totally different. “If we want to talk about  _ inconsiderate _ . It was kind of inconsiderate of you boyfriend not to help you with those boxes.

She’s too tired not to walk into the lazily set trap. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“No? Then who was that guy that came looking for you last night.” He scratches his chin in faux thought and her stomach flips twice. Had Sasuke come to find her when she didn’t show up at his apartment? “Before you got home--the blond kid. Helped with my mattress but he couldn’t be bothered to help you with the boxes.”

“That’s Naruto,” she sighs and gulps some more of her coffee. “He’s just a friend.”

“ _ Just _ a friend?” Kakashi smirks and leans closer. 

“You got me.” She smiles an equally toothy grin and blows a puff of smoke in his face. “He’s my  _ best _ friend.”

“That’s nice,” Kakashi pulls back and smiles. “I see one of my books got lost in transit.”

He nods to the paperback on her front steps and she composes herself quickly. “Yes, I--uh, I’ve been meaning to return it.”

“How….. neighborly.” Kakashi says it like it's his new favorite word. Neighborly and considerate. Two things he can’t seem to bring himself to be but is thoroughly enjoying saying. She retrieves the book and carries it back to him, handing it over gingerly as if she’ll catch something by holding it. “Did you enjoy it?”

“I didn’t read it,” she responds coolly.

In fact, she had. Last night with the bottle of wine, she’d read it cover to cover to the soundtrack of Kakashi’s debaucherous party he was too debauched to even be at.

“Good.” He slides it into the back pocket of his jeans and retrieves another from the other pocket. “I think you’ll like this one better anyway.”

“I don’t---”

“Please.” He holds up a hand. “This ones different, I promise.”

She tucks it under her arm and mumbles her thanks. She  _ had _ really liked it, especially the… illustrations. Porny balloon knockers aside, the artist had put a lot of effort into making sure the girls looked like they were enjoying themselves.

And maybe she was being a little unfair to Kakashi. He seemed like kind of an asshole but he was making a real effort to be nice to her, in his own way. 

“Let me know what you think,” he says with a smile. “There’s a lot more where that came from.”

“I  _ know _ ,” she huffs. “I’m the one that moved your entire porno collection to your porch, remember?”

Genma chooses this moment to stumble out of the house and down to the walkway. 

“Porno collection?” Kakashi smirks as his friend yawns and slumps over Sakura’s fence. “I thought you said you didn’t read it.”

She feels a hot blush spreading over her cheeks but refuses to look away, instead returning his leer with a hard look. “You shouldn’t have that stuff just out in the open where---”

“Anyone’s neighbor can steal a few?” He laughs and claps Genma on the shoulder, who groans in response. “Let’s leave this nice lady to her book. Can we get you anything, Miss Sakura. A bagel? To make up for our shindig last night?” 

“No.” She grits her teeth and finally looks away. She does really want a bagel but she’s not going to admit it. She flicks the cigarette butt at Genma’s feet and turns to go back to her stoop. She glances at the title of the book Kakashi gave her.  _ Icha Icha Neighborhood _ . She’s going to need a little more coffee and a lot more whiskey.

The party starts up again around the time she leaves for work and is in full swing when she returns. 

“Sakura-san,” Genma calls. “We’re having a party!”

“Thanks, dipshit,” she responds pleasantly, a fist curling absentmindedly at her side. He laughs, too drunk already to realize he’s in danger. 

She goes hurriedly into the house before Kakashi can appear and locks the door against the noise. Tonight she settles into a bubble bath with the book he’d given her and a fancy beer she’d chosen at the corner store. The story is just as lame and contrived as  _ Icha Icha Hospital _ but the illustrations have the same pleasing quality. This time the women are all different shapes and sizes and they mostly have fun amongst themselves. The only man in the book is a pervy neighbor who gets tied up and left at the dog park.  _ Not a bad idea _ …. she thinks tipsily.

She goes to sleep easily after her bath, wearing a pair of noise cancelling headphones. Sometime in the early morning she wakes up to pee just in time to hear Genma shooing away some drunk stragglers.

“Get outta here,” he yells, half laughing. “This is a nice neighborhood!” 

In the morning she makes another pot of coffee, no whiskey needed this time, and settles down on the couch to finish the last chapter of  _ Icha Icha Neighborhood _ . She wonders why he chose this one out of the stack of hundreds on his porch. Maybe the title--- he was so infatuated with that word,  _ neighborly _ , it was getting kind of annyong. But there was no innuendo to it, if he’d read the book. Unless of course he saw himself as the pervy peeping tom who got roped to a fire hydrant.

“Maybe…” she muses to herself, skimming the author’s note in the back of the book. Maybe he’s guessed some of her own private proclivities.

There’s a firm knock on the door and for a split second she thinks it might be him.  _ No _ , her brain scolds her.  _ He’d just come in through the window and start making himself a sandwich _ .

It’s worse. 

She looks through the peephole and groans. Standing on her front steps, impeccably dressed and looking cooler than a frozen cucumber is Sasuke.

“Sakura?” He calls through the door, a cloud of worry passing lightly over his brow. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m just….” Fuck it. She opens the door to reveal herself in all her Sunday morning glory. “I’m a little underdressed.”

He’s in a perfectly creased linen shirt and cut just right khakis and a pair of spotless boat shoes that have never touched water, much less left land. She’s wearing an overlarge t-shirt that tickles her knees and a gingham headband keeping a halo of badly dried curls out of her face, and to her horror--- is still holding  _ Icha Icha Neighborhood _ .

Sasuke smiles genuinely-- so rare and sweet, she’d gone on believing they could make it work for weeks off just one of those smiles. “You look fine,” he lies.

“Umm… what are you doing here.” She doesn’t want to invite him in. If he says yes and stays for a cup of coffee, they might end up making out on her couch. It had happened before. Or worse, he’d come in for a cup of coffee and then turn her down on the make-out session. That was even more embarrassing---  _ and _ it had happened before, too.

“Just checking in on you.” He clears his throat and shifts uncomfortably. “Ino mentioned you might be…”

“Feeling a little uncomfortable?” She finishes the thought for him. She’s remembering now why things had turned south. Even if she looked like a hot mess and he looked like a goddamn supermodel, he couldn’t communicate for shit. She was always having to finish the emotional statements for both of them, having to explain back to him his own feelings on top of her own. It was exhausting and, as she finally realized, not her job as his partner.

“We missed you on Friday.” He kicks at a stray piece of gravel on her steps.

“I had a long shift,” she says quickly. “And then this animal had a two-day party to top it all off. Everyone just left a few hours ago.”

“Hm.” Sasuke smirks at the unseemliness of Kakashi’s house. The trash strewn front lawn, the sagging boxes of books, the pair of passed out lovebirds canoodling under a deflated kiddie pool on the porch. “How long will he last.”

“Well  _ I’m _ certainly not going anywhere.” She suddenly feels a little defensive of Kakashi, sensing an undertone of snobbery in her ex’s voice. 

“No. You really love this house.” Sasuke smiles again, the snooty look wiped from his face as he considers the modest porch, the potted plants she’d been heroically trying to keep alive. “I know you worked hard for it.”

“Sasuke…” She tosses the book onto her couch and closes the door behind her to join him on the front steps. “Why did you come here.”

“I was in the area.” He’s a horrible liar and she rolls her eyes hard. “Fine, I felt bad that you didn’t come over this weekend and I wanted you to hear it from me, but, ah..”

“You have a new girlfriend?”

He winces a bit and nods. 

“Is it the girl we saw at the restaurant?”   
  


“The who we saw where?”

“Nevermind.” She shakes the spiralling bad thoughts from her head and gives a weak smile. “I’m glad you’re moving on. We both should. It’s for the best.”

“Hmm.” He pats her shoulder awkwardly and she knows that despite everything, he wants a hug. He’s so aloof, so calm and collected, that very few people know how much he craves just a little physical affection. Even as he’d been pushing her away emotionally, he’d still curl up next to her, pressed close against her side but never quite knowing how to ask for what he needed.

“C’mere,” she sighs at last and fits against his chest, squeezing him close and rubbing her cheek against the soft linen. “Are you going somewhere? You smell great.”

“I’m going to brunch, with…” He trails off but doesn’t break their embrace.

“Just tell me her name so I can start using it for my voodoo doll.”

Sasuke laughs once, clear as a bell, and pulls away. Not unkindly, just at arms length so he can look at her. “Yuka.”

“That’s a nice name,” Sakura smiles despite the distinct feeling in her chest like a burning roof is collapsing in. “Can I meet her some day?”

“Of course,” he says quickly, finally letting go of her, maybe for the last time she thinks. Even if they are friends, friends in a big, loud, overly dependent group of friends, it would be weird for them to hold each other like this now that he had a girlfriend. It was just different now. She hoped Yuka held him tight, too. Though if she was anything like the girls he’d dated before her, she was probably gorgeous and cold and too classy to cry. 

“Well…” She shifts from one foot to the other. 

“Well.” He takes a deep breath, can probably sense that something is well and truly ending. His shabbily dressed ex-girlfriend in his shabby old neighborhood, his new girlfriend probably waiting in a cream silk blouse somewhere at an upscale bistro.  _ Experiment complete _ , she thinks.  _ Hypothesis proven. _

“Yo.” 

Sasuke’s eyebrows nearly shoot off his forehead he raises them so fast. He quirks his mouth in question to her. 

Sakura rolls her eyes and mutters, “This guy again.”

“Morning, Sakura-san,” Kakashi is leaning on the fence, a brown paper bag held loosely in one hand. “I brought you breakfast but I didn’t know you had company.”

Sasuke gives her a firm, fake smile and slides his hands into his pockets as he turns down the path. “I was just leaving. Uchiha Sasuke, and you must be….”

“Hatake Kakashi.” Kakashi doesn’t take the proffered hand, but hooks open Sakura’s front gate with his foot as if to usher Sasuke out. 

“I heard you have quite a library,” Sasuke smirks as he walks through it. 

“Really? I haven’t heard a thing about  _ you _ .” A moment crackles between them and Sakura swoons inwardly. Two handsome loners, both alike in dignity…. But then she remembers that any fight Sasuke picks is for one thing only-- his own pride. She doesn’t know what Kakashi fights for yet. 

“Knock it off,” she says to both of them and neither of them and herself, all at once. 

“This Friday, Sakura- _ chan _ ?” Sasuke puts the emphasis on the honorific as if preening in front of Kakashi. He never calls her that. “Shika’s hosting.”

“Yikes--- I’ll bring everything then.” She waves him away and meets Kakashi at the fence.

“Bagel?” He flips her the paper bag and smiles under the bandana when she catches it deftly in one hand. 

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you for having a weekend long blow-out,” she says by way of greeting. “It just means I want a bagel.”

“Is that your other best friend?” He rakes his fingers through his hair. “He’s a lot better dressed than the rest of you.”

“No. That’s my… ex.” She grits her teeth and slides the sandwich out. It smells like scallions and tomato-- delicious. “He came by to tell me he has a new girlfriend.”   
  
“That’s kind of weird.” Kakashi laughs. “Did I get you the right one?”

“It  _ is _ kind of weird,” she agrees. “And, somehow, yes, you did. It’s my favorite. How’d you know? You know what--- I don’t want to know. You can keep going through my trash if you’re going to get my breakfast order right.”

“What’s this new girl have that you don’t?” Once again he speaks as if they’re having a totally different conversation. “Three tits?”

She unwraps the wax paper and takes a thoughtful bite. “Probably a better job and a bigger apartment and a nicer wardrobe and a trust fund.”   
  
“Downgrade.” Kakashi scoffs.

“It’s for the best.” She feels her heart drop suddenly. Sparring with Kakashi is fun, but the man she’d convinced herself she’d start a life with has just walked away to have brunch with his next girlfriend while she eats a dubious bagel with her least favorite neighbor. “Where’s  _ your  _ friend, Miss Early Night?”

Kakashi shrugs. “They come and they go. Did you like the book?”

Sakura blushes and averts her gaze, which makes him smile so hard she thinks the bandana might pop off his face. “Would you like the next one in the series?”


	5. Take On Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Damn,” Tenten whistles. “ His friends can soften me up if they want to though.”

Ino and Tenen come over for ladies night on Tuesday bearing enough wine for the whole block.

Sakura takes one look at the bottles crammed into either woman’s arms and laughs a little. “I already know, guys. But I appreciate the sentiment.”

The evening is warm and pink, so they sit out on the front stoop sipping from their own bottles and talking shit. 

“His building is so stuffy,” Ino whines. “So many rules. His neighbor started banging on the door at 10, shouting about guest curfews and noise ordinances.”

“I’m surprised Shikamaru stayed once he found out it was no-smoking.” 

“And that _girl_ \-- how stuck up can you be. She barely even met my eye.” Ino waves her bottle threateningly at the imagined offender. 

“She was probably just shy.” Sakura scrapes the corner of the wine label off with a jagged nail. “It's hard to be in a big group like that when you don’t know anyone.

“Ugh. You’re too generous. We’re fully prepared to hate her! For as long as necessary.” Tenten and Ino link arms with her in a dramatic show of solidarity.

“It's not her fault,” Sakura sighs. “If anything we should pity her. That guy is ten types of repressed.”

Kakashi and Genma come up the path, trailed by a cute brown-haired guy in a camo jacket holding a case of beer. They wave at Sakura and she waves back.

“I thought we hated this guy too,” says Tenten. “He kept you up all weekend!”

“He’s wearing me down,” Sakura admits. “He brought me a bagel.”

“Uh-oh.” The two women share a look over Sakura’s head. 

“You’re in danger, girl!” Ino rolls her eyes and nudges her friends’ arm with her foot. “Don’t forget-- the boxes! And the attitude. He’s probably softening you up so you won’t report him to the housing board.”

“Damn,” Tenten whistles. “ His friends can soften _me_ up if they want to though.”

Across the way, Kakashi’s little squad has stripped off their shirts and cracked into the beers. He leans over his gate and calls across the way. 

“Good evening, ladies.” A smirk tugs at the bandana. “Sakura-san, I’d like to be _considerate_ of your gathering and see if it's alright with you that me and my friends do some sparring in the yard.”

“How _neighborly_ of you Hatake.” Sakura feigns deep thought. She doesn’t care either way, and in fact is in just the right mood to watch a bunch of hotties beat the crap out of each other. “As long as this isn’t the prelude to a basement fight club.”

“Of course.” He bows his head modestly. “I would give you plenty of advance notice before I started a basement fight club.”

After a little more stretching than totally necessary, Genma and the brunet square up. It's not the inebriated scuffling the guys she knows like to do, but fluid, practiced, almost a dance. They must have some type of martial arts training because after a few firm blows Kakashi pronounces a winner. “Match to Yamato.”

Genma shrugs and pops open another beer, taking Kakashi’s place on the rattan chair and openly leering at Ino across the way.

She flips him the bird and frowns, but Sakura can tell by the shimmy of her shoulders she likes it.

“Dibs.” Ino says out of the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll take the ultimate fighter,” giggles Tenten pointing openly at Yamato. “I’m ready to climb that tree.”

“Hmph.” Sakura rolls her eyes. Not that Kakashi looks half bad with his shirt off, his surprisingly muscled chest heaving ever so slightly as he dodges his friend’s attacks. They let out a collective gasp as he knocks the bigger man flat on his back with a well-timed swipe of the leg.

“Match, Hatake,” Genma proclaims and gives his seat up to Yamato. He waggles a brow at the girls as he takes up position across from Kakashi. “You ladies want to tap in?”

Tenten flexes fists and smiles. They’d all met in judo class as little girls and had kept up with the practice well into adulthood, and nothing pleased any of them more than the prospect of laying out a smug, underestimating man.

“Be nice,” Kakashi admonishes, eyes flitting to Sakura. She’s flushed from wine and the taut stirring in her stomach from watching them spar. She shrugs and takes another sip.

“I get winner,” Tenten laughs, standing to stretch out her arms and legs. “Whose taking bets?”” 

Kakashi loses to Genma and Sakura wonders if it's on purpose. Both are well trained, though Kakashi’s movements are more thoughtful and composed. He should have knocked his friend down easily, but yields the mat to Tenten with a smile. 

Sakura and Ino lean over the fence to watch the match.

“I’m not going easy on you,” Genma warns. 

“I _am_ going easy on you,” Tenten shoots back as she fixes the buns at the nape of her neck. 

“Kick his ass, Ten!” Ino whoops, sliding easily into her usual role as the drunkest person there. Sakura confiscates the bottle of wine she’s flailing around and takes a long drink. From his seat on his front stoop, Kakashi winks at her and she feels the tightness in her stomach migrate down to the juncture of her thighs.

“Danger,” she mutters to herself behind the bottle’s mouth. “You’re in danger.”

Tenten flattens Genma in about thirty seconds, then helps him up and gestures to Yamato to assume the position. 

“No fair,” Genma whines, laying out on the porch. “I’m drunk!”

“So am I,” laughs Tenten, as she lands a whirling kick to Yamato’s broad shoulder. He grabs her ankle and moves to flip her but she nimbly uses the momentum to draw him up and overhead, landing face down in the dirt. “Yikes! Sorry big guy. Didn’t mean to throw you so hard.”

She helps him to his knees and Yamato laughs warmly, rubbing his forehead. “No worries, I should have taken you more seriously.”

Tenten is rewarded with a beer for her efforts and she waves the other two over to the opposite yard. Ino saunters over without a second thought but Sakura lingers behind.

She hasn’t been in the yard since Kakashi moved in and it feels something like crossing a line she never realized she’s drawn. He’s leaned over her fence but he hasn’t come inside and she likes him at that distance. She’s afraid if there wasn’t at least one layer of chain link between them she’ll find herself drawn like a magnet to him.

But she doesn’t want to be rude and the window is closing fast for her to make a decision. Ino is already through the gate and up the path, making a beeline towards Genma’s reclining form. Kakashi quirks his head and crinkles his eyes as if to say, _Coming?_

Reluctantly she crosses the pathway and opens the front gate, stepping over the deflated blow-up doll and assorted trash to pick her way to the front steps.

“You have a lovely home,” she snipes.

“Not much curb appeal, but the view is to die for.” He shifts on the stoop to give her a seat. 

Settling on the lowest step, Sakura twists slightly so she’s not looking at him but passed him at Tenten who's nestled into the rattan chair and is thoroughly enjoying critiquing the men’s sparring style. Still she can’t help but notice Kakashi smells more of sweat than sandalwood and it makes her legs tremble.

_Watch it_ , she warns herself, _You know how this story goes_.

First they’ll laugh on his stoop and then he’ll show her the house, even though she _knows_ it's identical to her own, then she’ll be in his bedroom testing out the mattress, the one that looked comfy and had no stains. Then he’d be next to her, smelling like sandalwood and moving the straps of her sundress down her arms, and then….

“Sakura-san,” Yamato repeats politely. “How long have you lived here?”

“Oh-- uhh.” She takes a sip while she composes herself, suddenly sweating despite the setting sun. “ A few years.”

“It's a nice place,” Kakashi offers brightly and she feels his knee graze her shoulder as he repositions himself to address the others. “Good neighbors.”

Sakura rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to snark back but Ino beats her to it.

“I don’t know about _that_ ,” the blonde snorts. “Finally got rid of her ex down the block and then a pervy party animal moves in across the way. You guys have become quite a nuisance.”

Yamato throws up his hands as if to say _wasn’t me_ and Genma laughs, looping an arm over her shoulders. “How’d you know Hatake-kun’s a perv?”

Ino hooks a thumb at the boxes still stacked on the porch and nestles closer to his bare chest. “Cuz he’s got the _Icha Icha_ lending library on his front stoop.”

This gets a hearty laugh and Kakashi smiles coyly behind his bandana. “I’m happy to provide an important public service.”

They sit talking like this until the case of beer is empty and the moon is up and bright. Tenten clears her throat several times to indicate to her roommate it’s time to go. 

“Can I get your number?” Genma says as everyone shuffles around to leave. 

“No.” Ino puckers her lips and winks. “You’ll just have to wait for me to come around again.”

Yamato throws the crushed cans into the empty beer case and escorts the women out the back entrance to the street.

“Should I have offered to walk them home?” Genma asks with a belch.

“No, you wouldn’t have gotten past the front door with Tenten there.” Sakura rolls her eyes and stands to brush off the backs of her legs. “She specializes in blocks.”

She emphasizes the point with a playful punch towards his chest, which he stops easily and laughs. “Then can I walk _you_ home, Bubblegum-san? I heard there’s a pervy old weirdo that just moved in.”

“Hey,” Kakashi says defensively. “I’m not old, it’s just the hair.”

Genma puts his shirt back on and yawns as he leaves the yard. “Yeah, yeah. I gotta go see a Guy about a thing.”

Now it's just the two of them under the moonlight. She hadn’t meant to be the last to leave but here she is. She didn’t want to be alone with Kakashi and his naked chest crisscrossed with a delicate web of scars and the sandalwood halo that follows him everywhere. But there they are.

“So…” she says, just to break the thickening air between them. “I should--”

“The ex that lived down the block,” Kakashi interrupts. “Not the pipsqueak I met yesterday, right?”

“The very same,” she grimaces. She doesn’t bother to defend Sasuke, though it's probably the first time she’s heard someone refer to him as a pipsqueak. 

“Hm.” He empties a can of beer into one of the palm plants meditatively. “Did you know him before he moved in?”

“Oh yeah, we all know each other from way back.” She can’t stop the looseness of her tongue, can’t think of a good reason why she should right now. “We trained at the same dojo as kids. Sasuke moved in here a couple months after me and then at some point we…”

“It can’t be easy to live so close to someone once you break things off.”

“It was… torture to be honest. I was relieved when he moved out. Always feeling like I was going to see him, hearing his voice down the block. Knowing he was existing a few houses away. Just made it harder to accept.”

“So he broke up with you,” Kakashi scoffs. “What a nimrod.”

“No, no. It was mutual. As mutual as it can be, you know?” She sighs and rubs her arms against the cold night. “Eventually I realized he wasn’t ready to give me what I needed.”

“Frequent consideration and open communication?” Kakashi walks with her down to the front gate, opens it for her to pass through in an uncharacteristically gentlemanly fashion.

“Basically.” She crosses away from him to her gate, afraid of saying too much, afraid of getting sucked into the whirlpool of wine and wanting and the persistent desire to find out how he managed to smell like sandalwood all day long. “It's… a bad idea to date a friend. And even worse to date a neighbor.” 

“I couldn’t agree more.” Kakashi smiles behind the bandana and she can’t help but feel a little deflated.

The best thing to do is stay away from him completely, to not let herself rebound and project a whole bunch of unrequited feelings onto this total slob. He’s probably a decade older than her and no more equipped to be an emotionally mature, mentally balanced partner than Sasuke was. He’s lived twenty feet away for two weeks and she still has no idea what he does for a living. Doesn’t know anything about him at all, except that he likes shitty metal music and cheap beer and smutty books and hanging out with his loser friends. If he has a life’s ambition, this was probably it. A trash covered yard and a total sucker making googly eyes at him from across the street.

She gives him a weak smile but can’t really meet his eye. Her mood has taken a swan dive into self-pity and she wishes she could summon back the tipsy contentment she’d felt sitting on Kakashi’s stoop. Sakura feels his eyes on her now, like he’s looking straight into her mind, seeking out the parts she keeps tidily packed away. 

“Seemed to work for the _Icha Icha_ girls, though,” he laughs before turning back towards his own house. “Goodnight, Sakura-san.”

“Goodnight,” she mumbles, and barely gets inside before the dam breaks and she slides to the floor and her cheeks flood with hot tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DAMN. I'm totally blown away by the response to this story!! Honestly I've gotten more comments on this fic than all my other ones combine. I'm glad so many people are enjoying it! I'm posting as fast as I'm writing, which is pretty fast :) I'm getting just as much joy from writing as people are from reading. If you can't tell--- I REALLY MISS CHILLIN WITH MY FRIENDS ON THEIR FRONT STOOPS. 
> 
> One of the commentors shouted out Sakura for recognizing it isn't her job to take care of Sasuke's emotions. Its interesting to come back to writing ff as an adult, now that I know that so many of the romantic tropes I wrote and enjoyed as a teen were.... just not actually healthy relationships dynamics lol. Here is my reminder to you all--- it's not your job to fix your partner!


	6. Night Moves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sounds like it's for the best,” Sasuke murmurs, not looking up from his phone as his thumbs fly over the keyboard. “The guy seems pretty useless.”
> 
> Hinata frowns, snuggled up under Naruto’s arm. 
> 
> “I think he sounds kind of sweet,” she offers softly. “In his own way.”

The next morning she resolves to ignore him completely. To nip whatever weird dynamic was forming between them in the bud. She’s embarrassed and a little depressed at her reaction last night, and fully ready to blame it on the copious amounts of wine she’d drank. 

“Pathetic,” she admonishes herself under a scorching shower. “Totally pathetic.”

She avoids the front steps for the rest of the week, lounging instead on her couch to reread the book he’d given her, _Icha Icha Coffee Shop_. She’s gone through it twice now and is ready for the next one but is loath to return it--- to talk to him or to admit how fast she’s going through them. When she comes and goes from work, she hurries and closes the gate as quietly as possible so he won’t hear her and come out since he seems to have a preternatural sense of when she’ll be around. 

But of course, in his maddening fashion, now that she wants to show him she’s ignoring him Kakashi’s nowhere to be found. 

He isn’t drinking coffee and reading pervy books on the front steps, he isn’t blasting metal music or having friends over to spar. The house is completely dark, a pile of mail forms on his front steps. Yamato comes by and peers into the kitchen and then shrugs and walks off, and Sakura watches it all through her living room window, resisting the urge to go out and ask him about Kakashi. She realizes that--- heaven forbid--- something was wrong, she has no way of getting in contact with him or anyone he knows. She kind of wishes Ino had given Genma her number now. 

On Friday she slides out of work early to go to the grocery store and picks up everything they’ll need for the cookout. She texts Sasuke to ask him to bring charcoal, feeling somewhat mature that she hits send without her fingers shaking.

_Will do_ , he responds, and then a few moments later, the telltale text bubble appearing and disappearing twice before he adds, _Yuka is coming_.

_Who?_ _Jk. Can’t wait to meet her_. Sakura bites her lip to keep it from trembling. She wonders if it's sadder to go home and get dolled up or to go looking like a slob. 

The point is moot, it turns out. Sasuke arrives at Shikamaru’s apartment while she’s attempting to fix her hair in the bathroom.

“Where’s Yuki?” she hears Shika ask. He probably can’t remember her name but it feels like loyalty and it makes her smile.

“Yuka,” Sasuke corrects, and then somewhat curtly, “She had plans.”

Sakura pins her pink waves into two little pigtails and walks out like she hasn’t heard a thing. “Did you bring the charcoal, Sasuke?”

Tenten and Ino recount their ladies’ night for the group over burgers, leaving out no detail much to Sakura’s chagrin. 

“And I said, we just got rid of her ex-- no offense, Sasuke-kun-- and now you morons are here,” shouts Ino, two cocktails ahead of everyone else. 

“So we _don’t_ hate him,” Naruto asks, brow furrowed. “Or… we do hate him? Because he’s a moron?”

Everyone turns to look at Sakura for judgement. She notes the tension at Sasuke’s jawline with only fleeting interest. She thinks Kakashi deserves a little more than being the vehicle for making her ex-boyfriend jealous. In two weeks he’s paid more attention to what she said than Sasuke had ever managed. He remembered little details, connected dots in their conversations, showed interest in meeting her friends. He’d miraculously figured out her bagel preferences and given her a few good books, smutty as they may be. It went a long way with her.

_We’re nipping it in the bud, remember?_ She admonishes herself.

“We hate him less,” she says diplomatically. 

“Uh-oh,” singsongs Tenten. 

“We know what that means,” Naruto laughs. “Danger!”

Shika lights a cigarette and she reaches her hand out for one. Sasuke’s face hardens for a moment and then returns to its normal placid detachment. He always hated when she smoked, but that hardly matters anymore. 

“Shut up.” She puffs anxiously and nibbles her lower lip. “Why does everyone keep saying that.”

“So…” Ino says, trying to act casual. “Do you think tonight will be another party?”

“Why, so you can ‘accidentally’ run into Genma?” she teases back. “No, I haven’t seen Kakashi since Tenten kicked his friends’ asses. I think he’s out of town.”

“Sounds like it's for the best,” Sasuke murmurs, not looking up from his phone as his thumbs fly over the keyboard. “The guy seems pretty useless.”

Hinata frowns, snuggled up under Naruto’s arm. 

“I think he sounds kind of sweet,” she offers softly. “In his own way.”

At the end of the night, the pair walks Sakura home. Usually seeing a happy couple canoodling so soon after a breakup would turn her stomach, but she just can’t seem to summon up any disgust for the two. She appreciates that she can talk with her best friend freely even with his girlfriend there, and she loves Hina for loving Naruto. Loves her especially tonight for putting Sasuke in his place in her quiet way.

“I don’t know,” Sakura sighs. “Am I pushing it? All this talk about danger and Kakashi. I’m really trying not to like this guy.”

“No way!” Naruto throws his free arm around her shoulder, relishing having his two favorite girls snuggled up to him. “I love him, but Sasuke’s acting like a real prick. Did he even tell you he was bringing his girlfriend last week?”  
  
“No… I didn’t know about her until he came by Sunday morning.”

“Sunday morning? Before brunch? Ow!” Hinata pinches her boyfriend’s wrist and shakes her head just slightly. 

Sakura feels a dull ache in her chest but chases it away. It makes sense, Naruto and Sasuke’s friendship made up the other side of a triangle that had persisted since childhood, and she hopes will somehow form again. Under different circumstances Sasuke would have been walking with them, calmly flaying her ex with a few well-considered words. It shouldn’t bother her that they were already going on double dates with Yuka.

“It's ok,” she assures them. “I love you guys. And--- I love Sasuke, I just can’t be _in_ love with him anymore. You don’t have to feel weird about it. Everyone should get to be happy.”

“Awww, Sakura-chan,” Naruto fake sobs. “So brave!”

She feels Hinata hand squeeze her side for just a moment and catches a shy, supportive smile. “You should get to be happy too, Sakura-san.”

She’s a little disappointed that his house is still dark when she gets home. It had been lonely living at the end of the block before he moved in, and she’s gotten used to Kakashi’s presence, obnoxious as it so often is. 

Naruto is disappointed, too. “Man! I really wanted to grill this guy. Make sure he’s not gonna do anything untoward to my Saku.”

“You wanted to borrow a book,” Hinata giggles. “Like you don’t have enough already.”

They wait until she’s safely in the house before leaving, waving to her through the living room window. Sakura sighs and double checks the locks on the door and windows, feeling especially isolated tonight. Even before they dated, knowing Sasuke was just a few doors away had made her feel safe and with Kakashi gone, she barely knew anyone on her block.

“You’re fine,” she sighs. “You’ve lived alone for a long time.”

She leaves _Icha Icha Coffee Shop_ on the kitchen counter and resolves to return it in the morning to one of the boxes on the front porch before Kakashi can come back. Then she won’t have a reason to talk to him--- ever. Ino and Tenten lived close enough that if she needed someone they’d be there in flash. She has her friends and her family and her job and her house, and she’ll learn to get along with Sasuke and whoever he ends up with. 

She doesn’t really need a guy at all. 

Ever. 

Sakura cries at the thought of this existence until she falls asleep, and dreams of little black haired babies all smoking cigarettes and muttering _danger_ over and over again. She wakes up thoroughly unnerved and goes to fix a cup of tea though it's still dark out.

Over the whistle of the kettle, she hears the unmistakable sound of a window shattering and without thinking, flings open the front door. Someone has broken into Kakashi’s kitchen and is moving around in the dark.

“Hey!” She realizes too late that she doesn’t have a cellphone or a weapon. The best she’s going to do is draw the robber over to her house. “What the fuck!”

The light in Kakashi’s kitchen flicks on and a head pops out the broken window.

“Mah, Sakura-san,” Kakashi stage whispers. “Keep your voice down--- it’s late, people are sleeping.”

“Where the hell have you been,” she yells, covering the distance to her front gate in just a few strides. It’s cold and she’s wearing just a tank top but adrenaline is still pumping through her. She feels the vein in her forehead pop to the surface as Kakashi lazily climbs through the window. 

Sakura knows the wrong question had left her mouth when she sees his satisfied expression. 

“Are you keeping tabs on me now? It’s only been a few days.”

“I thought you might be dead in there,” she huffs. “It smells so bad anyway, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“Much worse than dead.” He leans over and she catches the faint scent of sandalwood on the early morning breeze. “I was working.”

“Working?” She hadn’t considered he might have a job. _But then again_ , she thinks, _you haven’t known him long at all_. 

Kakashi shrugs. “I have to put food on the table somehow.”

“I’ve never seen you eat, either,” she muses out loud, fingers flexing against her arms to build a little warmth.

“Indeed… Aren’t you cold, Sakura-san? It looks like you forgot your pants.”

“Hey! I only came out here to make sure your house wasn’t getting broken into, asshole.” _At least you’re still wearing panties_ , sighs the voice in her head defeatedly, _No one can say I didn’t try_ _to keep you away from this loser_. “Not like there’s anything in there worth stealing.”

“You’re right about that,” he laughs. “My prized collection is still sitting on the porch. I do have a _very_ nice mattress, though. I left my key here when I left for my trip, so the window was my only way in.”

“I’m surprised you even lock your door,” she scoffs. Kakashi considers this for a moment.

“You’re right, I don’t.” He rubs the back of his head. “Oh well, sorry for waking you!”

“You didn’t-- I can’t--” She gives a frustrated growl and stomps back to her house, slamming the door before he can say goodnight.


	7. Mask On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His eyes follow a lazy trail from her tennis shoes to the silver clip holding back her bangs and she sees his nostrils flare under his face covering. 
> 
> “Genma.” Kakashi rises slowly, stretching a crick out of his neck. “Don’t you have to see a Guy about a thing.”

She tosses and turns but doesn’t sleep, and finally gets out of her bed as the birds start to sing determined to keep her plan to return the book. Kakashi would be asleep until at least the afternoon. _On his_ very _nice mattress_ , her imagination supplies. 

“Shut up,” she tells herself sharply in the bathroom mirror. She makes breakfast, tries to read a normal, fully clothed novel but it hurts her head. _I’m regressing_ , she thinks. _And I’m talking to myself, like a lot._

Around 8 she slips on a pair of sneakers and queues up a podcast for a run, grabbing _Icha Icha Coffee Shop_ off the counter on her way out. She lets out an unhappy sigh upon stepping out on the porch. 

Kakashi is sitting on his rattan chair, drinking a cup of coffee, reading a smutty book.

“Good morning, Sakura-san! Still mad at me?”

“I’m not mad,” she lies, closing her gate behind her harder than she means to. “I barely think about you.”

“I think about you barely, too,” he responds pleasantly.

She stands at his gate and holds the paperback out. “I’m returning your book.”

“Ready for the next one?” He doesn’t get up. 

“Come get it.”She shakes the book at him expectantly.

“Really.” 

“Yes, really,” she huffs. “Then I’m never talking to you again.”

“Hmm.” Kakashi sips thoughtfully on his coffee, lifting his bandana just enough to bring the mug to his lips. “That’s probably going to be a challenge.”

“Come take this book, Hatake. So I can go on my run and then ignore you forever.”

“What if I don’t? You’ll throw it at me?”

She thinks about it before lying. “Yes.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” A smile crinkles his eyes and he scratches at his grey mop of hair. “I think you like books too much to throw one.”

“You don’t know what I’ll throw,” she mutters without much confidence. It’s true that she would never hurt an innocent book, whatever the owner’s sins. She shakes the volume in question at him again and harrumphs at his smile. “Fine.” 

Sakura flings open his gate and stomps up to the porch.

“Good morning,” he says again, as if it’s the first time seeing her. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“No,” she snaps and drops the paperback into his lap. “Take your book, Hatake. And then leave me alone.”

“You’re the one in my yard. What if I say you leave me alone?”

“That--” She tries to keep her face from falling. It's hard to keep up this level of anger when the object of your hatred is sitting in his boxers in the early morning sun. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“No.” He tosses the book into the nearest box and begins rummaging around for another. “I want you to yell at me over nothing forever, Sakura.”

She doesn’t wait to find out if he’s joking or not. By the time the tears come, she’s down the block, dodging around parked cars and trash cans. Fat, hot tears, one after another and she can’t explain why--- all she had wanted to do was push Kakashi as far away as possible and instead he’d managed to hit the rawest nerve in her body. She runs until the sniffling sobs make it too hard to run, and then she sits down on the curb and cries into her shirt. 

“You ok, miss?” Someone walking their dog stops to check on her but she waves them away. 

“I--I--just broke up with---” She can’t get the rest out because it’s not true. She and Sasuke broke up months ago. And you can’t break up with your annoying, sexy, mean neighbor. So what was she crying about?

She keeps walking around until she’s sure all of the tears are out and the puffiness in her face is replaced by a sheen of sweat and sunburn. She loops back home in the opposite direction, coming from the main entrance rather than her little shortcut in the back. Kakashi is not on his porch or in his yard, but the broken window has been patched with the cardboard from a case of beer and the pile of mail is gone.

Sakura showers, then starts to cry again so she sits down in the tub and considers calling out. _This is so dumb_ , she thinks as she dries off. _I’m going to miss a shift because of Kakashi_. 

She picks up her phone several times to text Ino but can’t bring herself to do it. She doesn’t want advice and she doesn’t want to commiserate. She wants to dissolve on a molecular level and reconstitute as a ladybug on a branch somewhere far, far away.

Sakura pulls herself together for work, even putting on a little mascara to discourage more tears. She slips out with no sign of her neighbor, though she sees the back of Genma’s head as she slinks away. She hopes the clinic is slammed, that she won’t get home until 2 a.m. Instead her boss takes one look at her and pulls her into the back office.

“What’s wrong, Haruno.” Tsunade closes the door and brings out a bottle of whiskey from her desk. “Is it that skinny little twerp Uchiha, again? I swear---”

“No, no.” Sakura knows it's against every regulation but she accepts the drink thrust at her. She probably won’t be seeing patients tonight if her mentor is already breaking out the booze. “He does have a new girlfriend, though.”

“I hate her already. Let’s not talk about him.” Tsunade had never much liked Sasuke, even before they dated. She said, somewhat rightly, that he was both a total snob and nowhere near good enough for her protege. “Why have you been crying all day.” 

Sakura doesn’t ask how she knows, just does her best to recap the last few weeks without bursting into hysterics.

“And then he said he _wanted_ me to yell at him over nothing,” she finishes, dabbing fresh tears from the corner of her eyes. “And no one ever takes me seriously, especially when I’m mad.”

Tsunade tops off both their drinks. “He said that or you said that?”

“I said that, right now.” Sakura takes a gulp and cools her cheek against the glass. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it before, but it's true.”

“Sakura. You don’t need to be taken seriously to be right.”

Sakura gasps a little, like she’s been thumped in the chest.

“There will always be someone, probably a man, trying to persuade you that how you feel is made-up, or crazy, or too much, or you should just let it go.” Tsunade maneuvers out of her bra and throws it on the desk with a relieved sigh. Each cup is about the size of Sakura’s head. “But you get to decide what's true because it's _your_ feeling. Have I reacted strongly and had to check myself in the past?”

Sakura coughs.

“Of course I have. But it doesn’t make any feeling I have less valid.”

“I guess so.”

Tsunade reaches over to cover Sakura’s hand with hers. “Sometimes I’m mad because I’m a little crazy. That doesn’t mean that I’m crazy everytime I’m mad.”

She smiles warmly and Sakura’s heart swells. Tsunade could be… a little crazy but it was usually an understandable response to the realities of running the largest network of free clinics in the state. “Does that make sense, sweetie?” 

“Yes, thank you.” Sakura blushes a little at the rare pet name. Tsunade must be lit. 

“Good because I’m already a little drunk and we need to redo your face, now c’mere.”

Tsunade gives her a fresh layer of make-up and a dab of perfume. She insists Sakura touch it once in her cleavage and once at the nape of her neck.

“Who smells a wrist? Don’t waste perfume anywhere you don’t want to be kissed on a second date.”

“Jeez!.”

She sends Sakura home. “Call your friends. Or kick down that neighbor of yours door. But don’t just watch soap operas and cry off my make-up--- it's expensive.” 

Sakura leaves the clinic feeling a little better. It was rare for her mentor to be so tender but that was Tsunade. She was full of surprises. 

Yamato falls instep with her a few blocks from home. He seems genuinely happy to see her, asks after Tenten and Ino. He laughs when she tells him they all met at the dojo.

“Then you’ll spar with us next time?”

“Maybe. I’ve got a good left hook.”

“I look forward to it.” 

They stop so he can buy a six-pack and she doesn’t even bother asking where he’s headed. 

“I’m swearing off drinking,” he tells her on the way out, showing her the clutch of sodas he’d bought. “People give you shit but after a few drinks no one even notices what you have in your hand.”

“Why can’t you just _not_ drink in peace?”

He shrugs. “You tell me.” 

They walk to the housing complex and Yamato is so earnest that when he invites her to the party she can’t say no. When they round the corner she can see that the yard is already packed with people, the telltale boombox wedged into the window pumping out a cacophony of poorly played instruments. Everyone looks very cool, like they had all come over from the sly smile and olive drab convention. 

“I just have to drop my bag,” she says, buying some time and he wags his finger at her like he knows she’s going to not come back out.

Inside she changes into a fresh dress and a pair of tennis shoes. On the way out the door she texts the girls group chat _LOL going to Kakashi’s party_.

Yamato has been waiting, leaning over Kakashi’s fence chatting with someone on the other side. 

“You _definitely_ thought I was going to bail,” she laughs and he nods, opening the gate to let her into the yard. 

“You look beautiful tonight, Bubblegum-san.” Genma sidles next to her and presses a can of beer into her hand. For once he sounds sincere. 

“Thank you,” she smiles sincerely back.

“I can’t believe you came over,” he laughs. “Hatake hasn’t run you off yet?”

She grimaces at the turn of phrase. “Almost. I’m just sick of being in a bad mood.”

He clinks his beers with her and smiles around his toothpick. “Let’s find Kakashi.”

They work their way through the crowd up the front steps, Genma greeting people and making introductions as they go.

“Do you know _everyone_ here?”

“Of course.” He looks back at her puzzled as he pushes through the door. “Hatake only likes friends around.”

Kakashi is in the living room sorting through a pile of loose CDs. “Shiranui, help me out.”

“Just pick something.” Genma plucks a random one out of the pile and passes it to someone sitting near the stereo. He taps Kakashi twice on the head with his knuckle. “Look who made it.”

Kakashi pulls up his bandana a little higher on the ridge of his nose and smiles. “Sakura, what a pleasant surprise.”

“Don’t get excited, I couldn’t say no to Yamato.”

His eyes follow a lazy trail from her tennis shoes to the silver clip holding back her bangs and she sees his nostrils flare under his face covering. 

“Genma.” Kakashi rises slowly, stretching a crick out of his neck. “Don’t you have to see a Guy about a thing.”

“Nah, he’s right here.”

At this Kakashi is knocked sideways by a blur of green terrycloth. “Kakashi!! My friend! My beloved rival!”

Guy holds him tight for a moment and then drops him. It's the first time she’s seen Kakashi look anything less than perfectly cool.

“Guy this is--”

“Of course, I know Sakura!” Guy gives a gentlemanly bow. “ I was filled with pride to hear you’re working with Tsunade at the free clinics. Your idealism and sacrifice is an inspiration. It’s good to see you. Genma! My compatriot. Where can I get a drink?” 

He tugs Genma away, shouting over the clattering of boombox as they switched to the mystery CD. 

“How do you know Guy?” Kakashi leads her away from the speaker towards the front hall, looking for a corner to settle into.

“He’s my friend’s sensei, they’re like…exactly the same person.” They find an opening in the crowd against a wall.

“Well then.” Kakashi looks slightly uncomfortable. “I guess you know how old I am now.”

She laughs. “I knew you were old.”

“How so?”

“Because you started a conversation with a neighbor.” 

“People don’t do that?” He grins and gives a little wave to someone walking just out of her line of vision.

She taps her chin in thought

“Nope.I have no idea who lives on the other side of us.” She swears she sees his smile deepen when she says _us_. “The only reason I knew the people who lived in your house is because they were old. They used to invite me over for cocktail hour.”

“Interesting. But if you don’t talk to your neighbor, who's going to run out in their panties in the middle of the night to stop you from breaking into your own house?”

She rolls her eyes and turns like she’s going to walk away but he brushes his hand over her wrist and says, “Come on, I’ll give you a tour.”

“Our houses are identical. I know there’s not much else to see.” Again his eyes crinkle at the word _our_.

“Then let’s find somewhere to talk away from the awful music.”

“You could turn it off.”

“Fine, lets some other excuse to get you alone.”

She smirks, a little triumphant to make him admit it. “You could kick everyone out.”

“For you.” Kakashi leans close, examining her face intently, sending a swirl of sandalwood and smoke and musk and something she can’t quite place but makes her want to eat him whole right there in front of everyone. “I might.”

She blinks once as his meaning clicks into place, feels like time slows down as her lashes open and close. She sees the expression on his face when he catches the scent of the perfume warming between her cleavage and feels the soft puff of breath he exhales as his pupils dilate and fixes her again with a _look_. Like he can see every inch of her at once. 

Time snaps together and the moment ends. The music turns somehow more unbearable and he gestures for her to follow him.

Sakura’s not surprised when she finds herself in Kakashi’s bedroom. She realizes it was probably inevitable but had hoped she wouldn’t have gotten here so soon. 

The room is downright mature compared to the rest of the home’s frat house aesthetic. He has a big, solid wood bed frame with a modern looking headboard. There’s a soft, fuzzy rug beneath the bed and a tidy desk in the corner with the lamp turned on illuminating the room.

“Very romantic,” she laughs. “Do you preset the lights for when you finally get the girl into your bedroom?”

“A little preparation never hurt anyone.” He leans against a bedpost and watches her as she noses around the room. “You’re quite curious.”

“I’m looking for clues,” she admits. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What do you do for work.”

Kakashi frowns. “Is that important?”

“A little.” She sits in his desk chair and spins a half circle in it to face him. “Why are you always wearing that ridiculous bandana.”

“I have on good authority that this bandana is suave and mysterious.”

“Oh please.”

“I just want to wear it. Can’t that be enough?”

She stops fiddling in the chair and meets his eye. “Of course.”

“It doesn’t bother you that I'm as old as Guy?”

Sakura feels a blush rise to her cheeks for the first time that night. “No.”

Kakashi lies back on the bed, kicking off his sneakers into the closet. “I’m sorry about earlier today. I don’t know what I said to upset you but I won’t say it again.”

“How are you going to manage that if you don’t know what you said.” She feels a little like a ping pong ball but she appreciates he’s not making small talk.

“Communicating openly.” He tips his head back to meet her eye and she wants to crawl across the bed to him and forgive him. Hard. “Frequently. Just tell me what I said wrong.”

She hums in thought. “I know that I was, but I didn’t like you joking about me yelling at you. People don’t always take me seriously--”

“Because you’re so cute.”

“-- exactly like you are right now.” She sighs and rises from her chair to cross the room. He bolts upright and holds up his hands as if in defeat. 

“Don’t go. I just meant-- you’re pretty and cool and I bet people underestimate you all the time because of it.”

“Thanks, I think.” She leans on the post at the foot of his bed, watching his shirt creep up his stomach as he lays back. “I have… a bit of a temper. But it's frustrating when my feelings aren’t taken seriously. I guess you kind of hit a nerve I’ve been ignoring for a while.”

“I can relate,” he murmurs. “People don’t always take me seriously either. They think they can take advantage of me because I seem like a spacecase.”

“I think you like it that way.” 

Kakashi sits up and fixes her with that endless look, she shivers a little under it as he draws closer. “You’re right. No one expects too much from me if they think I’m some slobby burnout.”

“Is that what you are?”

“No.” He shakes his head and the intense look dissipates, replaced with a fake looking grin. “But not by much.”

“Hmm.” She sits next to him on the bed finally and sighs. “What a waste. You open all up to me and then end it in a joke.”

“What! I’m bearing my soul here.”

“Do you really think I’m cute and cool?”

He smiles and traces the silver clip in her hair with the tip of his fingers. “I do. And I have a lot more compliments if you’d like them.”

“I guess you do owe me after this morning.”

“I think you’re very clever and tough and loyal. You work at the free clinic so you must care a lot about people. I think you’re _very_ pretty in the morning but you look exceptionally beautiful tonight.” His hand trails to the spot on the back of her neck where she dabbed the perfume earlier and she wants to lead it down to the other pulse point she’d applied it to. “I like that you put me in my place. And that you tell me exactly how you feel.”

“Kakashi,” she says warningly as he dips his covered lips to her neck. “I do not come and go.”

“Hmm?” He draws his nose along her collarbone, hot breath pooling against her skin. She grips the bedspread to stop herself from burying her hands in his hair. 

“Remember? You said, the girls come and go.” She rolls her eyes. “I don’t really do that.”

“Ah.” Kakashi nuzzles along her jawline undeterred.

“I mean, I _do_ do that to be honest but I don’t want to with you.” His head stops moving and he pulls back to look at her, an unreadable slant to his brow. “Like if we do this I’m not going to be happy watching a different girl coming out of your house every weekend for the rest of forever. I’m not that cool.”

“That’s very fair.” He lets out a humming sigh. “Torturous but fair.”

“You don’t have to decide tonight,” she says as she stands. “We can just hang out and. And listen to really terrible metal music, I guess. But probably not in here.”

“Sakura.” He holds out a palm and without thinking she places hers in it. It feels like her heart is beating everywhere in her body at once, like she can’t get enough air because it smells so much like him in here and her lungs just aren’t big enough to hold as much of it as she wants to inhale. He closes his long fingers around her hand, tracing a circle on her wrist with his index finger.“I appreciate your honesty. I really do. It’s not easy to be truthful with people, to be vulnerable. It’s easier to---”

“Wear a mask?” His grip tightens playfully on her hand. 

“Exactly.” He pulls her gently to stand a little closer, his knees grazing her thighs, his chin level with her chest. With his other hand he pushes away the flop of grey hair over his eyes and looks up at her, eyes wide and earnest in a way she’s never seen before. He holds her hand against his cheek and sighs. “You’ve really gotten under my skin.”  
  
“Hey, what are you talking about? You’re the one that’s been annoying me!” She scoffs but doesn’t move away, can’t bring herself to break the momentum of the moment.

“That’s not what I mean. I mean I don’t usually do this. Open up, give answers. Be nice.” She can think of ten snarky remarks but swallows them all, her mouth dry. She doesn’t know what's happening but she can’t help but buzz with anticipation. “You’re right that we don’t have to decide tonight. It's the easy way out. Rush into it like a pair of teenagers and then spend the rest of time avoiding each other. Then we’d never have to recognize that there’s something here. Something intense.”

He’s rubbing his clothed cheek against the back of her hand and she feels soft, contended puffs of breath against her knuckles.

“It… is intense,” she admits. “It feels like we’re just crashing towards each other.”

“Hmm. Do you want to crash into me?”

“Yes. Frequently.” Kakashi smiles.

“Do you really want to know what’s under my mask?” He guides her hand to his chin and her stomach flips.

“Depends-- do you have like a hideous moustache I should know about?”

“Not quite.” Instead of taking off the bandana, he moves her fingertips under it, resting them just below his lips and lets his hand fall away. She lets out an involuntary whimper and braces her other palm against his shoulder.

Slowly she traces the outline of his lips, pausing where the two part to receive the barest hint of a kiss on the pads of her fingers. She feels the soft swell of his stubbled cheeks, following a time smoothed scar up towards the top of the mask, then lets her fingertips roam to find the exact angle of his jawline beneath the fabric.

Kakashi shudders but doesn’t look away and neither does she. She knows he’s giving her something thats much more vulnerable than being naked together, much more intimate than a kiss or a quick fuck at a house party. 

“Kakashi…” It comes out breathy and needy and she feels both. She wants to take the bandana off and feel him against her, skin to skin. His whole body contracts and his hands fly to her waist, squeezing briefly before melting against the fabric.

“I know.” His growl comes somewhat strangled and she can feel the muscles tightening in his jaw under her palm. “Not tonight.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I can't say enough how much all your comments mean to me. It reminds me of why I started writing ff anyway and I'm so glad that it's bringing people joy. That's what its about right?
> 
> I think its obvious with my seven (YIKES) chapters in two days that while this is a slow-burn story, I'm on fire. I can't do anything else but try and bang out this plot before it deserts me. Like our beloved heroine and hero, I'm trying to slow it down and stretch it out but I'm probably going to try and finish it in the next few days.
> 
> If you are reading this and are moved to write a comment--- first of all, thanks! I really am incorporating the feedback as I get it in future chapters. Secondly, please let me know if you'd rather have everything published at once or I should stretch out publication over the next few weeks. 
> 
> Ok I have to do my real job, bye now.


	8. Easy Like...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m pretty sure I’m performing the bare minimum expectations of taking someone out.” 

Sunday morning finds her in her own bed, the aching tendrils of a hangover already curling around her head and stomach.

“Ooough,” she moans, rubbing her eyes.  _ Beer before liquor….. how does it go? _

They’d slipped out of Kakashi’s bedroom with no one the wiser, but their conversation hangs in a sandalwood cloud between them the rest of the night, an intoxicating secret that sends a hot tingle up her spine every time she feels his eyes on her. She’d thought he might drift away and leave her to her own devices but instead he’d stuck by her side, providing color commentary as the night progressed.

“That’s Asuma,” he whispers, pointing to a bearded mountain of a man arguing with a beautiful, but thoroughly pissed young woman. “As you can see, he’s taken way too long to propose.” 

Genma and Yamato drift in and out of their conversation, ostensibly to offer her another drink or share some tidbit of gossip they’d picked up. She watches them carry Guy away sometime after midnight and she waves goodbye.

“Behave yourself, Bubblegum-san,” Genma calls. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” 

Around three she can barely keep her eyes open and she lays a hand on Kakashi’s shoulder. “I’m going to bed.” 

He gives her one last burning, longing look that drags from her fingertips on his collar bone to her hooded eyes. “Can I walk you home?”

“I think I can make it.” She extracts her keys from her bra and he growls. “Patience.”

Now lying in her bed, she lets every delicious idea of what could have happened wash over. She finds herself sighing at the thought though her hands stay chastely buried beneath her pillow.  _ Danger _ , her brain mumbles as it conjures Kakashi next to her, palms sliding under her t-shirt, sleep-roughened voice in her ear.  _ You’re in danger, girl _ .

Outside there’s the unmistakable clang of beer cans being kicked into a pile and a laugh she can recognize anywhere.

She slides out of her dress from the night before and into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. She flings open her front door and calls, “Naruto!”

Her best friend is across the way, drinking a cup of coffee with Kakashi in the front steps.

“Saku-chan, you’re alive!” Naruto waves and laughs as she hops her way barefoot across the hot pavement and into Kakashi’s yard. It's getting easier and easier to go through the gate every time. He flings his arm around her and lets her steal his coffee. “You didn’t pick up my calls so I came over.”

“I didn’t hear it! I must have, umm….” 

Kakashi winks and produces her phone from nowhere. He’s sitting comfortably in a pair of boxers and his bandana. She shivers at the memory of her hand underneath the mask, the slippery scar tissue on his cheek, how he’d smiled against her palm before she’d oh so reluctantly pulled away. 

“Left it somewhere?” 

“Hmm.” She sips the coffee and scrolls through her missed texts while Kakashi and Naruto compare notes on dirty comics, metal music, and domestic beer. There's about thirty texts in the girls’ group chat, and ten missed calls from Ino too. She texts again while Sakura is reading through the thread.

_ HARUNO. Are you getting properly fucked?  _

She chokes on a mouthful of coffee and quickly replies before tucking away the phone.  _ Not yet, maybe la _ ter.

Kakashi goes to get the coffee pot, leaving the two friends on the steps.

“So.” Naruto smiles a broad, knowing grin. “You left your phone here last night?”

“It's not like that.” She blushes and punches his shoulder weakly. 

“You don’t have to be coy with me, Saku-chan,” he teases.

Kakashi comes back out with a third mug and tops them all off. It's bitter and strong and makes her insides gurgle a little. She puts an absentminded hand on her tummy and Kakashi’s expression melts a little behind the bandana. 

“Dang--- that reminds me.” Naruto drains his mug and puts it down on the porch. “I got a date with some eggs benedict and hash browns.”

For a moment he hesitates as if he's going to ask if they want to come but his face flips between excitement and confusion and she gives him a reassuring shake of the head. She knows who he's meeting. 

“Thanks for the coffee,” he says to Kakashi, bumping his fist in farewell, “And the uh--- book.” 

He gives Sakura a crushing hug that lifts her off the ground and shakes her. He promises to come by later and she laughs, “Please  _ don’t _ .”

“So.” Kakashi says, leaning back into his chair once Naruto is gone. 

“So.” She smiles and sits on the edge of the porch at his feet, her toes dangling among an overgrown patch of dandelions. Sakura feels like a character in a movie, not a real person. It's been ages since she felt so giddy and lustful and  _ young  _ all at once.  _ You should get to be happy too _ , Hinata had said. 

“Hmmm,” Kakashi responds contentedly, curling a stray lock at the nape of her neck around his finger. “You never answered my question yesterday.”

She laughs, recalling the parry of half-answers the night before. “Which one?”

“How did you like  _ Icha Icha Coffee House _ .”

He smiles as she recounts her opinion point for point, comparing  _ Coffee House _ to the other books in the series. “The storyline is a little contrived again, but I like the drawings.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, even if the plot is played out the illustrator makes the characters so diverse. I like that there’s all different types of pairings.”

“Hmm,” he smirks and gives the curl a tug. She turns to hide her blush, recalling how very many different combinations of bodies and kinks and configurations it had included. She had especially liked the trio of male baristas who’d found several creative ways to clean up a spill. “I bet you liked the frappuccino scene.” 

“Shut up.” She kicks at a dandelion head. “How did you know. How do you always know?”

Kakashi shrugs. “I just have a feeling about you.”

Her heart flips and she’s about to ask what exactly that feeling is when she hears another familiar voice. An  _ ahem _ that conveys every molecule of disdain and discomfort in it’s owner. 

Sasuke is standing at the front gate, one hand buried deep in the pocket of a pair of sherbert green shorts and the other flexing ever so imperceptibly at his side. He’s wearing a white button down and loafers, looking like a full J.Crew model.

“Sakura.”

“Oh!” She’s genuinely startled. She feels Kakashi’s toes tickle the small of her back affectionately. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on you,” he says through a tight jaw. She watches a shadow of angry thoughts ripple over his handsome features, just a slight tension in his eyes most people wouldn’t have recognized.

  
“I’m fine.” She frowns at the painfully preppy outfit and he snorts, wagging his head at her.

“Naruto said you weren’t answering your phone.” 

She tries not to be too mad at her blond butthead of a best friend. Old habits die hard, and if he hadn’t been able to contact her, Sasuke would have been his next call. 

“Ah, you just missed him,” Kakashi answers pleasantly. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

“No.” His face flattens and his eyes dodge away as if bored of the conversation, and Sakura’s stomach knots a little at it still. How many conversations had been cut short with that look? How many feelings swallowed under its coldness? She’s suddenly very aware that Kakashi’s calloused finger is still playing in her hair. “Thanks. I have someplace to be.”   
  
“What’s wrong, skipper? Fire at the yacht club?” Kakashi cocks his head in mock concern, wiggling his toes against Sakura’s back again.

She bites back a laugh, Sasuke hates to be teased. But he does look like he’s about to sail off dry martini and a wife named Muffy.

“I---”

“Well say hi to Hinata for me,” she says pointedly and gestures with her head for him to scram.

“Hmph.” A fake smile slides into place and he starts down the walkway. “Of course. Take care.” 

“Your friends are very protective.” Kakashi releases the curl on his finger and watches it spring back. “Your phone was ringing off the hook this morning.”

“Naruto means well. We’ve been through a lot together.”

“And the pipsqueak?” She grimaces.

“We’ve been through a lot together too, unfortunately.” 

They sit in silence for a while, Kakashi contently playing with the strands coming loose from her low bun while she squirms inside. 

“It’s totally over,” she blurts out. 

“I know.” He gives another little tug. “I don’t find jealousy to be a particularly constructive emotion.”

“I don’t either.”

“Does Pipsqueak-san know it’s totally over,” he muses.

“He has a new girlfriend.” She can feel the easy joy that had been building all morning start to drain away.

“The one with three tits.” He rubs gently over the tense muscle where her shoulders meet with the side of his thumb. “What a fool. Doesn’t mean he knows you’re not his anymore.” 

She makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan and Kakashi stiffens. 

“What was that feeling,” Sakura sighs.

“ _ That _ feeling?” He rests his hand at the nape of her neck. “I thought you’d read all the  _ Icha Icha  _ books I gave you.”

“No, no,” she laughs and turns to rest her head against his arm. “The one from earlier--- the one you have about me.”

“Ah.” She’s worried he’ll pull away but instead he just leans down to nuzzle at her earlobe through his mask to deliver his response. “Not tonight.” 

“Kakaaashi,” she whines. Her stomach grumbles again and she wonders how many ways one girl can be interrupted.

“Do you want breakfast?” He gives her one last nip and straightens in his seat. 

“Breakfast sounds good.” 

He takes a reflective sip from his mug. “I don’t cook.”

Sakura laughs. “Neither do I.”

She crosses back to her house to get her shoes and wallet while Kakashi goes to get dressed.

_ I am alive,  _ she assures the group chat.  _ No one else needs to check on me _ .

_ Oooooooo _ , writes Tenten. 

_ Danger, _ replies Shika.

Ino texts a single eggplant emoji.

_ What’s going on??  _ writes poor Lee. He never checks his phone. 

Kakashi is waiting for her at her front gate and opens it for her to pass through. He’s wearing slouchy jeans and a T-shirt with almost no holes in it. And of course, a black bandana. 

They walk without any real plan of where they’re going and after a few blocks Sakura laughs. “This is weird!”

“How so?” Kakashi sways against her and she laughs again. 

“I don’t know. I’ve barely seen you outside your front gate and now we’re walking around and like…”

“We’re what-- communicating?” 

“Yeah.You don’t feel a  _ little  _ weird?”

“So? We’re just communicating, openly.” They stop at an intersection and wait for the light to turn. “I feel happy. And-- hungry.”

To her surprise he leads her to a little diner on the other side of the park. 

“You want to sit down?”

“Well… yeah.” He furrows his brow as they settle into a vinyl covered booth. “What did you think I meant when I asked you to breakfast.”

“I don’t know.” She blushes and hides her face behind a menu. “I’m not used to your ways.”

The waitress brings them a carafe of coffee and promises to come back soon for their order.

Kakashi pushes the menu down with one finger and knocks his knee against hers under the table. “I’m pretty sure I’m performing the bare minimum expectations of taking someone out.” 

“Exactly. People don’t do that anymore.” She fiddles with an empty creamer pod. “People don’t say they want to… communicate and then just do it.”   
  


“I think you’re overthinking the situation,” he says kindly, taking her hand across the table. “And I think you want buttermilk pancakes with chocolate chips with a side of bacon.”

“Get out of my brain,” she mutters and laces her fingers with his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again THANK YOU to everyone who has commented. I'm not responding individually because the response has just been totally overwhelming!!! So if you've commented over the last 7 chapters, consider yourself warmly thanked and adored.
> 
> You all are just so observant and keen, you make an authors heart sing. There's no way I could match the heat of the last chapter but I hope you enjoy this fluffernutter sandwich of a scene. And, yes, I'm heeding the calls for making Sasuke squirm 😈 there's more where that came from.


	9. Better Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No call, no note,” Genma clucks and moves his hand from where it had been on Ino’s hip. “And yet still with impeccably bad timing.”

He orders a vegetable omelet and french toast, she orders a buttermilk shortstack with chocolate chips and side of _turkey_ bacon. She smiles triumphantly at him as she hands the menu over to their waitress and he rolls his eyes and tops off their coffees.

“So.” She steeples her fingers in front of her on the table and fixes him with a determined look. “You have to answer at least _one_ of my questions Kakashi.”

“I did, I told you I was hungry.”

“Hey!” She nudges his ankle under the table with her foot. “I think you know a lot about me. Enough to give me some really specific and frankly very touching compliments.” 

He smiles wide enough to stretch the bandana wide across his cheeks and her heart beats a joyous doubletime, knowing that he’s thinking about last night. _All_ of last night, based on the glint in his eye.

“I want to know more about _you,_ ” she says low and earnest. 

“Ask away.”

“Hmmm.” She wonders where the best place to start is. She’d already tried to get him to talk about work and that hadn’t gone far. And the bandana thing wasn’t getting answered any time soon. “How about something easy. How do you know Genma and Yamato.”

His face drops suddenly and he says stonily, “I can’t tell you that.”

“Uhm..”

He starts to laugh, eyes bright with mischievous joy. “You should see your face.” 

Kakashi recounts the perfectly ordinary origins of their friendship--- college roommates who’d stuck around together. Yamato worked at an architecture firm downtown and Genma did a little of everything. 

“Bouncer, bartender, gas station attendant,” Kakashi counts off on his fingers. “Uhh youth soccer referee. I think he worked at a massage parlor for a little while.” 

“And you all… play in a band together?” She prods, trying to tease out his own occupation.

“Nope.” He thinks about it. “Briefly. We were the Blade Humpers for about three weeks.”

“But you _do_ run a luxury car smuggling ring together.”

Kakashi rubs his neck. “What are you _talking_ about.”

“If you won’t tell me what you do for a living, I’m just going to guess big and work backward.”

He’s saved from answering by the delivery of their breakfast.

“You’re not going to eat like that, are you?” She can’t help herself. Kakashi smirks and loosens the bandana just enough to lift the front barely over his lips. She can’t see much more than his chin, so she huffs defeatedly and takes a bite of pancake. Kakashi keeps his gaze steady as he deftly guides a forkful to his hidden mouth and shakes his head at her disappointment. 

“Patience,” he chides. 

After breakfast she hasn’t made much headway with the answers she _really_ wants to know, so she settles for the little things. By the time they finish their walk through the park, she's extracted that his favorite food is grilled fish and eggplant, he likes dogs better than cats, he is decorated with an indeterminate number of tattoos she’ll have to count for herself one day, and has no family he cares to speak on.

“Tell me about one of your exes.” They’ve stopped for iced coffees— her treat, she insists, since he’d slyly paid for the breakfast bill while she was in the bathroom. 

“Hmmm.” He sounds like he's thinking about it but doesn’t answer, just sips away pleasantly. 

“Come _on_ .” Sakura nudges him with a hip. “You’ve met _and_ insulted one of mine. It’s important.”

“How so?” She's starting to get tired of their 20-questions game, aching for a straight answer.

“The other relationships in someone’s life says a lot about how they’ll treat you,” she says seriously. “And their willingness to be open about it does, too.”

He studies her serious face, somewhat undermined by the bright pink straw she’s chewing on, and sighs. “You’re right. It was a long time ago. Her name was Mina, and eventually she got tired of my bullshit and left.”

“That’s… pretty straightforward.” They find a bench to sit on, neither ready to return home just yet.

“It was.” He crosses one ankle over his knee, spreads an arm across the back of the bench and resists the urge to pull out a book to avoid the conversation. “What does that tell you about how I’ll treat you?”

Sakura shrugs. “That you’re totally your bullshit, which I knew anyway. The fact you have so many long term friends means a lot more to me. Romantic relationships are easy to end when they get too hard, friendships you have to work at.”

“Friends are very important to you.”

She smiles, thinking of them all wherever they might be this morning, even the far flung ones who’d moved away from the city. “They are.”

“I like your friends.” He passes his palm over her neck and grins at the sigh it elicits. “Except Pipsqueak the Prep.”

“What are you going to do,” she laughs. “Beat him up for being mean to me?”

“Nah.” Kakashi moves his arm around her shoulder and draws her just slightly closer. “I think he’ll suffer plenty without you.” 

Her phone buzzes and it’s her parents on FaceTime. She winces guiltily. She’s been so wrapped up in her own drama she hasn’t called in ages.

“I’ll call them back.” She moves to dismiss the call. “I haven’t been the best daughter lately.”

“No, no.” He holds up a hand and removes his arm from her shoulder. “I don’t mind. It’ll be nice to hear how a normal family speaks to each other.”

“I’ll be quick,” she promises and slides to accept their video. “Hi guys!”

“Sakuuura we miss you!” Her parents proceed to thoroughly embarrass her with pet names and prying questions about her health. 

“You’re not drinking too much are you?” Her mother admonishes. Sakura feels Kakashi peek over her shoulder just out of the camera's frame to get a look at her. 

“Don’t listen to her!” Her dad’s shaggy pink head eclipses the screen. “It's the summertime, you’re allowed to have fun.”

“Ok, ok.” She laughs, holding up a hand in defeat. “I have to go, I’m out with a friend.”

“Hi Naruto!” The singsong together.

“No...um. A different friend.” She shoots a look at Kakashi. He’s looking at her with something very close to glee in his eyes.

“Oh.” Her mom turns to whisper to her husband, as if she can’t be heard through the phone. “Is she with a _man_.”

“Sakura,” her dad says in mock seriousness. “Are you out with a man.”

“Ok, BYE.” She shouts and waves furiously. “Love you!”

“We loooove you---” 

She taps to end the video and looks sheepishly at Kakashi. 

“Yikes, sorry about that.”

He replaces his arm over her shoulders and nudges her with his knee. “That was extremely cute.”

She’s scheduled that afternoon so they head home and Sakura gets the sense he’s dragging his feet a little.

“I’m going to be late,” she says sternly when Kakashi stops outside a bookstore to examine their window display, but can’t keep the smile off her face. 

“Mah, Sakura.” He taps his chin thoughtfully and tips his head to give her a look that can’t be denied. “Just tell them you got lost on the path of life. Let’s look at some books.”

They split up upon entering the store, she heads towards new fiction and he goes in search of erotica. She breathes in the fresh smell of paper and floor wax, enjoying the feeling of running her fingers over the unbroken spines on the shelves. Sakura loves books, she really does. Every one of them contains a universe, a thousand characters named and unnamed living their lives, spinning the web of the story. She locates a new hardcover by her favorite author and slides it from its place.

Sakura finds Kakashi exactly where she expects to, through the lurid, purple beaded curtain that separates the adult section from the rest of the store. 

“Sup,” says the attendant without looking up from his book.

Kakashi is crouched on his haunches in one of the aisles, halfway through another _Icha Icha_ title.

“What’s this one,” she asks leaning over him. “ _Icha Icha Space Station_?”

“No, but that’s a great idea.” He replaces the book and folds up.

“I’ll write a letter,” she laughs. “You’re not going to get it?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, I’ve been using my imagination more lately.” 

She pays for her book at the front register, and the cashier greets them both by name.

“My two best customers,” the man laughs. “I should take your picture for our newsletter.”

Her phone buzzes on the way out. 

“Kids these days,” Kakashi says with a cluck of his tongue. “Always on their phones.”

“It’s my boss,” she says, landing a soft punch to his arm“She’s giving me the day off.”

What Tsunade had really said was, _Haruno. Hopefully you are barely walking today after spending the night punishing your new neighbor. Don’t worry about coming in today, you will be dopey and useless to me._

“That’s nice,” he says in her ear and then draws away as they cross the street. “What do you do at the clinic that your schedule is so flexible.”

“A little of everything,” Sakura laughs. “A little bit of administrative stuff, a little bit of marketing and outreach. Mostly I’m an assistant to the executive director.”

“Oh? I thought you were a doctor. Doctor Haruno sounds so good.” She shivers at the way his voice flexes over the word _good_ . She recalls a scene in _Icha Icha Hospital_ where the on-call doctor takes her rude patient's temperature by tying him up with her stethoscope and spanks him with a clipboard until he addresses her properly.

“I wish,” she sighs. “There was no way I was going to get the money together for med school. My folks are sweet but broke and really bad with money. It was more important to me that I could be financially independent so I got my degree and went right to work. I’m lucky Tsunade picked me out of the crowd and saw something in me. I get to work in the field I wanted to, even if it's not exactly how I saw it happening.”

“There’s still time,” Kakashi offers softly, as if he’s assuring himself more than he is her. “To be what you want to be.”

Sakura shrugs. She’d given up on being a medical professional a long time ago. What she did was just as important to keeping the clinics open and running smoothly serving patients. “What do _you_ want to be, Kakashi?”

They’ve found themselves back home, standing in the walkway. He tucks a stray hair behind her ear and hums in thought.

“I still don’t know,” he admits. “But I’m pretty good with whatever I am right now.”

There’s a loud cough and they turn to find Ino and Genma sitting on Kakashi’s porch. 

“ _There_ you are.” Ino grins. “You had us worried _sick_.”

“No call, no note,” Genma clucks and moves his hand from where it had been on Ino’s hip. “And yet still with impeccably bad timing.”

“Don’t you have your own house, Genma?” Sakura scoffs. Kakashi tweaks her ear as he draws his hand away and smirks.

“Why would I, when Hatake never locks his doors?”

“Tsunade gave me the day off,” she says to Ino. They join the pair on the steps, Kakashi greeting his friend with an ornate handshake before going inside with the promise to be right back. 

Ino pumps her fist in the air. “Sunday funday!”

“Hey, you think your friend wants to spar again,” Genma asks, examining the book Sakura had brought home. “I think I can take her this time.”

Ino snorts but takes out her phone to text her roommate. “You definitely _can’t_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, another big thank you for everyone who has commented. I feel both totally supported also completely terrified to let you down!! I think there will be some strong feelings about the events of the next chapter.... But I'm trying to be real here, and also have an exciting story, and we know that these two are far, far from perfect. 
> 
> Also, come over here. Yes. Sit down. Right there. Listen to Auntie Thelma. 
> 
> The way the object of your affection treats the other people in their life is very, very important. A lot of media loves the trope of "they're only good to ME so it has to be real". No. That's fucking dumb. If someone has strong, long-term friendships or a healthy relationship with their family or has amicably broken up with their past partners--- all of those are very good signs. Not the only good signs, or a perfect indicator that they will treat you well because truly anyone can turn out to be an asshole.
> 
> But they all show emotional maturity, which is what you, Dear Reader, deserve.


	10. Blame It

This week it's Naruto and Hinata hosting. Their apartment is equal parts adorable and a total mess, and it's easy to know who's responsible for what. Empty ramen cups of every size, color, and provinency line the top of the cabinets like trophies, sharing space with cutesy, animal shaped tupperware. The fridge is covered in post-it notes with reminders like “check milk before you drink it” and “no tinfoil in the microwave” crowded with photobooth strips of the two of them at every age. 

Sasuke and Yuka are already there when Sakura lets herself in, and it takes some of the sting out to not have to watch their entrance. 

She greets everyone with a wave and a happy smile, with a sunny  _ nice to meet you _ to Yuka, though every fiber of her being wants to examine her head to toe and identify all the ways she’s better than Sakura. Instead she busies herself in the kitchen with Hinata.

“What’s up with you and that neighbor?” Ino asks mischievously once they all take a seat. Sakura gives her a warning look.

“We  _ don’t  _ hate him anymore,” Naruto says decisively. “Right Saku?” 

“You should invite him to Friday night dinner,” Tenten suggests, passing a platter of steak around the table.

“I don’t think it's like that,” she sighs. “I have no idea what it's like, to be honest.”

“Well why don’t you ask him?” Yuka says with a smile. Everyone laughs and she looks pleased. Sakura feels for her. It can’t be easy to slide into a big group of old friends, especially when your new boyfriend’s ex is sitting a few chairs away. 

“This guy is man-child,” Sasuke answers, directing his reply into his new girlfriend’s ear with a curl of his lips. “She’s not going to get a straight answer from him.”

Sakura's neck burns thinking of all the times Sasuke had refused to give a straight answer to her. Maybe Kakashi was still hiding a little but he was man enough to admit it, and let her in as much as he could. She feels the memory of his lips against her fingertips and it relaxes the fist starting to form in her lap. 

“He’s not as obtuse as  _ some _ people I’ve dated,” she says pointedly. “You don’t really know him.”

They’d said goodnight on Sunday after another intense round of  _ not _ kissing. She’d snuggled up to Kakashi,sunburned and sleepy after her friends had been escorted home by Genma. He told her a little about his library, that it had started as a few secret copies as a teenager and then ballooned in college after he started doing coursework on the history and philosophy of erotic literature.

“Then I wrote my thesis on character development in multi-volume adult graphic novels and now…” He gestured vaguely to the leaning stacks behind him.

“So wait--- you have your masters?” 

“An MFA. Barely using it though.”

“ _ Barely _ ?’ she gasped.

He fiddled with the cuff of her shorts, sliding a long calloused finger under the hem. “Just barely.”

He’d walked her to her front gate and then she put up a palm to stop him.

“If I let you through this gate, you’re going to walk me to my door. And if you walk me to my door I’m going to drag you to my bedroom.”

“Is that why we always hang out in my yard?”

“Yes.”

Kakashi had stroked her cheek and let out a rough laugh that made her quake. “How do you know I won’t drag you to my bedroom?”

“You already did.” She leaned into his touch, falling into a pool of sandalwood and musk.

“Hmmm. It doesn’t have to be the bedroom.”

She shivered and slid her hands to his jaw under the cloth around his face. He didn’t stop her. “Some people have bandanas, some people have front gates.”

“Of course,” he’d said softly, and placed a covered kiss on her other cheek before opening the gate in question for her to go through. “Good night, Sakura.”

The next morning there was a note on her door.  _ Left town for work. Don’t water the plants. Put on pants before stopping robbers. _

“Ahh, man.” She groaned. “I still don’t have this guy's number!” 

She spent the week trying not to get her hopes up but it's hard. They’d moved so fast and yet not gotten anywhere. She misses his not-kisses and half-answers and double entendres. She misses the happy laughs of his friends hanging out way too late on a weeknight. She needs a new  _ Icha Icha _ and after three days with no sign of him, she crosses into his yard to find one for herself.

In the other boxes are even more books than she’d thought possible. Not all of them were dirty manga either. There were plenty about  _ shunga _ prints, kama sutra illustrations, bath house mosaics, Mesopotamian reliefs, Greek pottery. 

“No wonder this guy keeps his face covered,” she mutters to herself. “He’s probably got chronic nosebleeds.”

One box is most surprising. Not because of the range of titles but because they’re all the same. The cover is a familiar looking drawing of a smirking, rubenesque dominatrix pushing a yukata clad man’s face into the supple buttocks of a smiling woman with the toe of her leather boots. The title read  _ Illustrating Radical Feminine Pleasure _ and the author was…

Hatake Kakashi.

Sakura carefully closes the box so it looks as neglected as it’s neighbors and slinks back to her house empty handed. She would let him tell her when he wanted to. 

The next two days felt like slow torture. She went to work, grocery shopped, hung out with her friends, all the while thinking  _ what would Kakashi be doing if he was here _ ? He hadn’t said when he’d be home but she had a good idea he wouldn’t miss a Friday night with his friends.

Back at the table of her own weekly tradition, Sasuke shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“Neither do you,” he snipes and then turns away to talk to Shika about his new job. 

“Do you think you’ll see him tonight?” Hinata places a tentative hand on Sakura’s arm to get her attention.

Sakura gulps. “I hope so.”

After dinner they sit around for another hour, chatting away. Sasuke and Yuka are cuddled up on Naruto’s couch, a bit demonstratively she thinks, given his general distaste for PDA.

_ Maybe he likes it with her _ , she thinks without much regret.  _ Maybe he’s growing _ . 

She thinks about Kakashi holding her hand at the diner, his arm around her shoulder, her palms under his mask. It makes it okay that Yuka  _ is _ indeed totally gorgeous and well-dressed and genuinely sweet and apparently perfect. The only thing bothering her is Sasuke’s preppy get up, another candy colored pair of shorts and monogrammed shirt. He’d always been a conservative dresser but now he was leaning fully into the off-duty finance bro vibe. She notices his shorts match Yuka’s perfectly pressed shift dress. 

He catches her look and returns it with a bored shrug, like  _ what's it to you? _ The movement stirs Yuka’s shoulder and she turns to grace him with the radiant smile of someone who has yet to see his worst side. He smiles down at her, too. And it seems like it's real. 

Sakura had been the one to call it off. If she had waited for him to admit that it wasn’t working then they would have died together at 90, still totally unable to communicate. 

“So I ruined it?” he’d said hotly in their last conversation before calling it quits. Finally, at the very end of things, he’d showed a little passion.

“That’s not what I said,” she’d cried, wiping away angry tears. “You just didn’t try to  _ fix _ it.” 

Their friends had understood, maybe even anticipated it based on the look in Naruto’s eyes when she’d shown up at his door. It had been cruel, looking back—- she could have gone to Ino’s or called her mom. She had plenty of people in her life and Sasuke, well. Sasuke mostly just had Naruto.

“Why does he make loving him  _ so hard _ ,” she’d sobbed against Naruto’ shoulder while Hinata fixed her a cup of tea. “All I want to do is care about him.” 

The next few weeks had been difficult and awkward, partly because he lived three houses down and partly because she kept letting him back in. He’d show up under the guise of talking more, but inevitably was unable to articulate what about and they would mess around on her couch like they had when things were first beginning. One day he’d pulled back when she went in for a kiss and glanced away. She knew then that  _ now _ things were done. Without much ceremony, they’d stopped checking if the other would be at parties or nights out and just started acting like the previous year had never happened at all. 

Inspired by last week’s match up, Tenten suggests they go to Sakura’s to spar in the yard where there was more space. Sasuke’s eyes light up--- he does love a fight-- but declines when he sees Yuka’s polite grimace. 

“Next time.” He says to his friends, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

They reconvene at Sakura’s, and she’s a little disappointed to see lights are still out at Kakashi’s. 

“Have you heard from Genma?” She tries to sound casual.

“Why don’t you ask him where Kakashi is yourself,” Ino snorts. “I invited him over.” 

Genma arrives with Yamato a little while later, but neither of them have any idea when Kakashi will be back. 

“He’s on the wind,” Genma sighs, taking off his shirt to square up against Shikamaru.

“You don’t have his number yet, Saku-chan?” Naruto is stretching on the porch, limbering up for the next bout. 

“Hatake doesn’t have a phone,” laughs Yamato. “He says what will find him will find him.” 

“What a load,” Sakura sighs.

After a few rounds she finally gets up to go against Ino. They’ve always been well-matched and she’s sweating when her friend finally goes down. 

“Match-- Bubblegum-san!” Genma calls out and hops up to face Sakura. “I heard you’ve got a left hook I should worry about.”

“Yes,” confirm Naruto and Shika at the same time.

Genma is slightly harder to take down then she’d thought.  _ Jeez, Tenten is really dedicated _ , she manages to think as she stumbles back, blocking his advancing kicks.

“You’re not going easy on me, right Sakura?” He smirks as she dodges close to land a blow against his shoulder. He never says her real name and for whatever reason, something wriggles in her chest. 

The desire to push away the feeling propels the swirling kick to his legs that topples him over and wins her the match. She offers him a hand up and he laughs. “Guess not!” 

A little later everyone peels off two by two until it's just Shikamaru and Sakura, finishing the last of the beers he’d brought and smoking his cigarettes. He’s always good company, a lazy demeanor belying a clever brain and soft heart.

“How’s Temari?” She’s sick of being the topic of discussion--- even Genma and Yamato had joined in on speculating about her blossoming relationship with Kakashi. 

“She’s her. Terrifying.” He stubs out a cigarette butt and lights another. “ Long distance sucks. I miss her.”

“Me too.” Temari could have a real attitude but she’s smart as a whip and had marshalled Shika into something like a functioning adult human being. And if Shika loved her that was enough for her.

He tells her about Choji’s latest win on the competitive eating circuit, complains about his new job.

“I like my boss, though,” he confides. “We’ve been playing  _ go _ in the breakroom. His name’s Asuma.”

“Oh, I know him!” Sakura laughs. 

Kakashi still isn’t back Saturday morning. She goes for a run and does her laundry and tries not to miss him because it’s getting a little ridiculous. Her head is barely there at work, and after reprinting the same document for the third time she slaps some water on her face and commands herself to get it together.

She stops on the way home for a bottle of wine, thinking that if he isn’t back she’ll sit in his chair and read  _ Icha Ichas  _ until he shows up.

Her heart swells at the party noises floating out from behind the housing complex’s tall fence. It can only mean one thing. Kakashi is home. 

She drops her bag in her front hall and takes a quick shower. She puts on a shirt dress with a long line of white buttons she hopes to watch him undo one by one, and walks across the way.

It's particularly packed tonight, with people spilling out of the yard and down the set of stairs to the back exit. She runs into Shizune and they talk for awhile.

“Don’t you live nearby?” She asks and Sakura gestures to her house. “Oh wow!”

She walks on, waves to Guy and Yamato and a few people she recognizes. 

Genma is sitting in Kakashi’s rattan chair, feeding the boombox CDs. “Nice dress.”

“Thanks.” They chat a little, he divulges he’s taken a fourth job as a dog walker and she recounts a particularly startling incident at work where someone had come in with the business end of an immersion blender in their ass.

“So,” he says over the mouth of his beer, “When are you going flip me again, Bubblegum-san?”

“Are you flirting with me?” She narrows her eyes but smiles. She can’t deny he’s charming and good looking, and she realizes for the first time that they’re friends now too. 

“I’m trying very hard not to,” he replies with an honest grin. “You’re very pretty and you kicked my ass. But I think Hatake might really like you. I’ve known him for a decade and he’s never bought  _ me  _ breakfast.”

“Where  _ is _ Kakashi,” she laughs, scanning the yard. Genma shrugs.

Sakura works her way through the crowd. On the way she gets little waves and smiles from the people she’s learning to know. She asks everyone if they’ve seen Kakashi and no one seems to know where their host is.

“Have you tried his bedroom,” suggests Asuma’s girlfriend Kurenai with an approving wiggle of her brows.

Her heart beats fast as she gets closer to his bedroom door.  _ This is it _ , she thinks triumphantly. A few yards away she spies a patch of his silver hair, followed by his muscled shoulders as he stumbles backwards. And then a hand with painted nails moves over his ear to the knot that holds his bandana in place. And then he opens the door and tumbles into the bedroom and Early Night falls in after him.

Sakura’s face burns hot in embarrassment and she turns on her heel.  _ What a waste of time _ , she thinks angrily, her feet taking her to the kitchen where she knows there’s several handles of unlabelled liquor and a bunch of sticky shot glasses.  _ If that’s how it is then that’s how it is _ . 

She chases down the sobs percolating in her chest with a shot of something clear and almost tasteless and then sets-up 3 more.

“No luck?” Genma is next to her, prying one of the shots off the sticky counter. “This one for me?”

“If you want it,” she grumbles. She’d planned to drink all three.

She kicks herself mentally for not seeing this a mile away. 

Best case scenario, Kakashi was a dog and had led her on, but she could move on with her life knowing that he was a garden variety asshole who’d just manipulated her until he’d lost interest. It wouldn’t be the first time, and if this little disaster was any indication, it wouldn’t be the last either. 

Worst case scenario, Kakashi did care for her but was unable to overcome his inability to commit, or maybe got spooked, and would have never been able to give her the stability she needed no matter how long they’d drawn it out. 

Genma had said he thought Kakashi really liked her, and he knew his friend had bought her breakfast. What else had Kakashi told his friends? Was Genma an accomplice or an unwitting bystander? 

“You okay, Bubblegum?” Genma nudges her arm and absorbs her glare with raised brows. 

“Hatake’s busy,” she says tightly. “He’s entertaining someone else already.”

“Ah.” Genma takes the third shot and then unscrews the cap on a half-full bottle of brown liquor. “Sorry, Sakura.”

She shrugs and screws up her nose to stop from crying. “I should have known better.”

“Damn.” Genma clinks his glass mournfully against hers and they both tip back the shot. “That’s kinda low, even for him.”

Sakura feels the effects of the second shot almost immediately, the starburst of heat in her chest, roiling with the hurt that’s alreadys sending sharp pins of adrenaline to her knees and hands. She feels her fists clench and unclench, an old fury she’d tamed as a teenager resurfacing in her. The vein in her forehead, dormant for weeks under Kakashi’s tender, confusing attention, reappears.

“Yeah he sure played me,” she mutters and refills the glasses.

Genma takes the shot but stays the bottle when she goes to pour another. “Slow down.”

“Nope.” She shakes free. “I’m getting obliterated tonight and tomorrow morning I’m checking into a convent.” 

“Hey, now---” Genma lays a hand high up on her shoulder to steady her, thumb resting softly on the base of her throat. “Let’s get you some fresh air.”

He starts to lead her out of the kitchen by the hand and a crushing swell of anger and helplessness and numb indifference makes her pull him back to her. 

Then, like a moron, she kisses him.

Genma makes a surprised noise against her mouth but melts in, letting them fall against the fridge. If it’s out of pity, it's pretty good, she thinks. His mouth is soft and inviting, and he tastes like mystery liquor and watermelon gum.

_ This is really dumb _ , she thinks, replanting his hand on her waist.  _ Why the fuck would you do this, Sakura. _

There’s a commotion in the hall and the sound of a door busting open. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Early Night stumble into view. She’s got her shirt in her hand and an angry grimace on her face.

“Fuck you Kakashi!” She growls. “You motherfucker--- how fucking dare you! I don’t  _ get _ turned down---”

The crowd parts and the woman storms out of the house still cursing, and the party restarts like this is a familiar occurrence. To her horror and surprise Kakashi walks out into the hall, eyes trained hard ahead of him at the woman raging away. She realizes simultaneously that he  _ isn’t _ wearing his bandana and she  _ is _ still kissing his best friend. 

Kakashi’s head swivels and for a split second she’s him for the first time. His face is lean, tapering into a square chin, centered around a slim nose. His lower lip is full and bowed, set in a permanently bemused slant. He’s freshly shaved and she can see the scar on his face is still red despite its age. 

In a moment the handsome face falls into a mask of cold rage. His brow clenches, nostrils flaring, mouth contorting into an ironic snarl. And his eyes. The bottomless look that had first pulled her in now appears to be trying to shatter her from the inside out. 

Genma pulls away and lets out a guilty breath. Kakashi shakes his head hard and disappears into his room, slamming the door behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK. 
> 
> Ok. I know.
> 
> But-- sometimes. It happens. 
> 
> Please don't give up on our gal, I promise she won't disappoint you. I almost deleted this entire chapter to start again but I do feel like you're going to like where it goes!!


	11. F*ck It, Mask Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Would you believe me if I said I was here for a cup of sugar?"

The party continues, spitefully late she thinks. Sakura had excused herself quickly, ripping away from Genma and fairly sprinting across the yard to her own house. She tried to vomit but couldn’t, tried to cry but she felt too numb.

“You’re such an idiot,” she snarls at her reflection in the bathroom as she wiped her mouth. “Why the fuck did you do that.”

She wraps herself in her comforter and pretends to sleep but is just playing the image of Kakashi’s face falling over and over, mingling with the feeling of Genma’s mouth against hers. 

As the sun rises she hears Kakashi and Genma singing drunkenly on the front lawn.  _ At least they’ve made up _ , she thinks dismally. 

She sleeps fitfully for a few hours after the birds start to sing, a cranky, dreamless sleep that leaves her feeling more tired than before. 

“You have to tell Ino,” she reminds herself, head still buried as she feels around for her phone. 

_ I have something I need to tell you _ . She winces as she presses send.. _ You’re going to hate me _ .

_ : -(  _ _ don’t tell me it was sasuke. _

Sakura grimaces and feels her knees turn to anxious jelly.  _ i made out w genma…. _

Ino doesn’t respond. Sakura doesn’t think their nearly two decades of friendship will end over a guy--- there have been plenty of guys to fight over. But she hates that she’s hurt her friend again, as they’ve hurt each other so many times before. Sakura will never forget the imperceptible pinprick of devastation in Ino’s eye when Sakura had confided that she’d been hooking up with Sasuke for weeks. Worrying about her friend's reaction takes the edge off her guilt for last night.

She had said it herself to Kakashi. A romantic relationship, as intense or bizarre as it may be, is easy to shake off as doomed or not worth it or just transient by nature. Lovers come and go, it’s what they do. To lose a friendship, especially one so long and close and hardwon, was a much greater tragedy. 

She calls out of work and tries to go about her day. They don’t need her on Sundays anyway. She thinks about texting Tenten but knows that if Ino’s mad, then she’s probably spending the morning getting earful about it. She considers going over to Naruto’s but knows they’re probably out with Sasuke and whatshername. And she doesn’t  _ really _ want to leave the house because if there was any chance at all of seeing Kakashi--- well that was out.

Shikamaru says he’ll be over in an hour, so it's another two before she hears him whistling up the stairs. “Put on pants, let's go for a walk,” he calls through the door. “I’ll be your lookout.”

The walk turns out to be a ruse to buy a pack of cigarettes and her phone buzzes while they wait in line. It's Ino.

_ yikes. _

_ I’m so sorry _ . Sakura lets out a soft groan and leans against Shika’s shoulder. He pats her kindly on the head but otherwise ignores her.

_ its fine bitch i barely know him. just... u know how i am _

_ Ik i’m still sorry, i love you. _ She puts a party size bag of M&Ms on the counter as Shika pays for his pack and gives a puppy dog look until he pulls out another bill to cover it. 

_ i love u too u big dumb skank. what about K? _

_ He saw _ . Sakura grimaces at the memory. Finally he wasn’t wearing that stupid bandana and she could see his whole face, and the expression had been hard and a little hateful and so different from the one she’d found herself starting to look forward to. 

_ Double yikes. _

They walk around for hours, Sakura eating her candy and Shikamaru chain smoking cigarettes. They pass by their old dojo and wave to Rock leading his class, the students only a little older than their little group had been when they’d all met. His look of pure joy at their appearance makes Sakura want to cry. He rushes to the door and hails them, congratulating their spontaneous celebration of youthfulness. “My friends! I must teach! I will see you on Friday!” 

“Kiba’s in town,” Shikamaru says suddenly, and they head towards the Inuzuka’s house. He’s sitting in the front yard with Shino. She takes a picture of them, both with their feet in a kiddie pool giving a thumbs up, and sends it to Hinata,  _ Look who I found! _

“I’ll be around all week,” Kiba promises and they make plans for Friday too. 

On the walk back she finally tells Shika the story of the night before. 

“Hmmm,” he puffs thoughtfully. “ I think you owe them both an apology.”

“I’m the worst fucking person on earth,” she moans.

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. You’re definitely not proud of your behavior. And you still haven’t heard what Kakashi has to say. You’re assuming that this chick forced herself upon him and he nobly rejected her. But you were wrong to go after Genma just because you were hurting.” 

She feels an angry blush burn on her cheeks. Shika has a way of cutting the core of the problem. He was right— she had some apologies to make but there might be some owed to her too.

Shika scouts the house for her and waves her up when he sees the coast is clear. Kakashi is moving around in his living room but the shades are drawn. She hugs Shikamaru goodbye at the door and he pats her head.

“Nobody’s perfect, Sakura,” he sighs. “But anyone can be understanding if they want to be.”

She makes a cup of ramen for dinner and calls Ino, apologizing again and again.

“So you guys just smooched,” Ino confirms after assuring her that it’s  _ fine _ and will frankly not stop her from shooting her shot with Genma. “I bet Shika told you different but I think you reacted right. What else could you have assumed! Some thotty bleach job he’s already fucked pulled him into his room right in front of you. Maybe kissing his best friend was a bad idea, but you went an eye for an eye and I’m here for it.”

“You know how that saying ends, right?” 

There’s a knock on her door.

“Whose that?” Ino demands, breathy in anticipation of further gossip.

“I don’t know but if it’s Sasuke I’m going to strangle him,” Sakura sighs. “I’ll call you back.”

She checks her appearance in her phone camera, but whoever it is there’s not much she can do about her hair or puffy face or morose expression.

“Who is it!” She calls through the door.

“Your neighbor,” comes the muffled reply.

“Listen, I’m not—“

She opens the door to find Kakashi.

“Would you believe me if I said I needed to borrow a cup of sugar.”

“No.”

“Would you believe me if I said I was here to apologize?”

“Even less.”

“Would you believe me--”

“Kakashi.” She holds up a hand. “If you’re here to bullshit me…”

He shakes a little and clears his throat, moves to take off the bandana on his face. She almost tells him he doesn’t have to but holds back. If he’s going to open up she’s not going to stop him. No matter how scared she is to do the same.

The cloth drops away to his throat, and she’s met with that sly, handsome face behind the mask. Her heart skips a beat and she gasps without meaning to.

“I know—- I’m hideous. May I come in?”

Sakura tosses the pity nest of blankets she’d made on the couch away so they can sit. He eases down in a familiar cloud of sandalwood and all she wants to do is snuggle up to him again. 

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out first. “For—- for last night. I saw something I didn’t have the full context for and I reacted childishly. I hope you’ll both forgive me and we can be friends again in the future.”

“I appreciate that. But you don’t need my forgiveness for anything.” Kakashi smiles and she can  _ see _ it, the curve of his mouth, the way his cheekbones slide up under the red scar. “I’m sorry, too. You weren’t…. totally wrong about what you saw.”

“Oh.” A pit forms in Sakura’s stomach. 

“I did… have a moment of panic,” he admits, folding and refolding his bandana. “I missed you while I was away.”

“I missed you too,” she murmurs. 

“And it scared me. A lot, to miss someone and care if they cared too. So when… she approached me, I thought-- It was stupid--”

“You thought you’d just ruin it properly?” Sakura tries to decide how much of a leg she has to stand on here. It was the same logic that seized her when she’d pulled Genma in for a kiss “I know the feeling.”

“I didn’t know you were there.” He traces the pattern on her sofa cushion and she crosses her arms. 

“That doesn’t really make it better.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’m sorry. And I hope I can regain your trust.” He looks her in the eye when he says it, corners of his mouth pulled down hard like he’s asking the impossible. 

She thinks. 

“Did you take off your mask for her?” She nibbles at her lower lip and he follows the movement with his eyes.

“God, no. I stopped before we even kissed and asked her to leave, she said I just needed to get in the mood and---” He furrows his brow. “Do you… really want to hear this?”

“Yes.”

Kakashi clears his throat. “And she yanked it off before I could stop her and…. Well you saw the rest.”

Sakura sighs. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

“Of course.” Kakashi looks earnest and a little frightened. 

“I guess we never really said we were exclusive or anything,” she sighs. “But it did hurt, in the moment. And now a little. I thought I was going over there to see  _ you _ . I wanted to show you how much I missed you.”

Kakashi breathes hard and flexes his fingers against the couch cushion like he wants to take up her hand. 

“I never want to hurt you. Ever again.”

“Okay.” She blinks hard against a sense of deja vu. “Then don’t. This is your freebee.” 

He laughs a little and she flicks him on the leg.

“I’m serious. I thought… I thought I didn’t mean anything to you. Like it was all a lie.”

“Sakura…” This time he does pick up her hand and she doesn’t pull away. “That’s not true. I don’t have the words…”

“Oh. Mr. MFA?” she can’t help but tease. “Doesn’t have the words to tell me how he feels.”

It breaks the tension of the moment, and his stunned expression is replaced with a grin. His smile is dead sexy, the tips of his canines peaking out suggestively. “They say show, don’t tell.”

She presses a palm to his lips as he dips towards her. “I need both.”

“Okay. I want to know you, Sakura. And.. to deserve your respect and have your confidence. I want to make you smile and feel safe and special. And I  _ really _ want to---”

“I know!” She laughs exasperatedly, tracing his lip with her thumb like she had that night in his room. 

“How can I show you,” he hums against her palm. “I’m not good at this stuff. But I’ll do whatever it is.”

“I want answers,” she says readily. “No more dodging questions. And… if you panic, just tell me. And if it gets too hard to do those things, then let me know and we can go our separate ways.”

“No more dodging.” He gulps hard. “I’m obviously not perfect, Sakura, you see how I live. I haven’t done this in a long time.”

“I don’t need you to be perfect. I have a temper and clearly, kind of poor impulse control. I need you to want to be better and then actually  _ try _ .” She studies his face intently and wonders if this will be her only chance to see it. “Do you get it?”

“I do. Open communication.” His worried brow softens as he recites their little joke. “Frequent consideration.”

“Exactly.”

“I want to---” He stops himself, makes some type of resolve within himself, and starts again. “I’m going to give that to you. And so much more. I promise.”

“Good because that’s what I want to give to you.” She squeezes his hand on the couch. “But we have one more thing to talk about and I’m not going to let you let me off the hook.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” Kakashi’s eyes flit away and back. “Like you said, we never decided we were exclusive.”   
  
“I was a dick for choosing Genma. He was just… there. And being really nice to me and I put him in a weird position. I owe him an apology, too.”

“We already made up,” Kakashi says with a lopsided grin.

“I  _ know _ . I heard you two this morning.” She holds Kakashi’s hand against her cheek and sighs. 

“I told you, I don’t find jealousy particularly productive.”

“Kakashi.” She stirs a little at the memory. “You looked  _ so _ angry. It scared me.”

“I’m sorry that I scared you, it wasn’t my intention. That look wasn’t meant for you. Or Genma. I was embarrassed and furious at myself, at the situation. I don’t like being exposed like that, and I don’t just mean my face. Though I didn’t… love seeing my best friend kissing you.”

“That’s valid.” She lets his hand drop but doesn’t let go. “Am I ever going to see that face pointed at me again?”   
  


“Never.”

“Only this one, right?” She caresses his cheek and his face melts against her palm, turning serene and handsome and just a little boyish that makes her feel protective.

“Mhmmm.” Kakashi sighs and draws her close finally. Her head fits easily into the crook of his shoulder, her hands against his chest and his arms looped around her. He smells like sandalwood and sweat and bookdust and she moans appreciatively. It's like a cologne made especially to drive her insane but she knows it’s just Kakashi. He takes a deep inhale too. “You smell delicious, Sakura.”

She laughs. “I probably smell like ramen and candy.”

Kakashi shakes his head and nuzzles along her ear. “I should have just answered all your questions from the start, not made it such a game. Then I could have kissed you before stupid Genma.”

“It's not his fault,” she sighs against his chest and snuggles closer.

“I’ll answer them all now,” Kakashi purrs into her ear. “Whatever you want.” 

“Wait a minute.” She slides from his lap, momentarily enjoying watching his jaw go slack in surprise. “I made a list.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I not say it was worth it!! I had to post this before bed--- they say torture your characters but I don't want to torture my readers!
> 
> A commentor a few chapters back said they liked how it wasn't the "two steps forward, three steps back" dynamic you see in a lot of media with a lot of forced drama and I thought DANG because while I completely agree, I knew this chapter was coming. Still, I think it's fairly realistic-- sometimes you run into some speedbumps starting out with someone and you decide if they're worth getting over. Plus-- we needed a little bit of stir up to get Kakashi moving! Like, jeez guy. It was also really important to me to have this moment between Ino and Sakura! That they would be able to work through their canon jealousy and rivalry.
> 
> Thank you to everyone whose commented, especially those who've been telling me to not burn out! To be totally honest, I'm going to be going away for a bit soon (not on vacation, lol. just to a place that is different than where my home machine is) and wanted to finish this story before I do. You all blow me away!!! Over 100 comments in 3 days.


	12. And They’re All About Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She pokes him with her foot from across the couch. “You said no more dodging.”

“What is your job.” Sakura curls at one end of the couch, notepad balanced on her knee. Kakashi is slouched gamely on the other side. 

“I’m a freelance author, so I make my money off lectures and articles and… book sales.”

“I saw your book,” she says sheepishly over the top of her notepad.

Kakashi clucks his tongue but his eyes are hot and inviting. 

“So nosy, rummaging around on my porch. What did you think?”

“I mean I could have found it if I’d Googled you. I didn’t read it but I liked the cover.”

“I knew you would,” he laughs. “I got the  _ Icha Icha _ illustrator to do it. I’ll get you a signed copy.”

Sakura blushes and moves on. “Why don’t you have a cellphone.”

“What’s with everyone and phones,” Kakashi scoffs. “Can’t a guy be old fashioned?”

She pokes him with her foot from across the couch. “You said no more dodging.”

“You’re right.” He captures her foot and begins rubbing firm circles on its sole. “I just don’t want one. Once you have a phone--- everyone starts asking you for things and expecting you to be places and wants to talk. I have a landline for emergencies and a laptop for emails and writing, and enough books and sexy, tempestuous neighbors to keep me occupied.” 

“Thank you.” She checks off the question on her list and keeps going. “I have a few more.”

They sit like this until the moon is up and the cicadas start humming. 

“How do you always smell like sandalwood,” she asks, stifling a yawn.

“It’s just my soap,” he laughs. “I’m surprised you can even smell it.”

“I smell it in my  _ dreams _ ,” she sighs, nestling her feet into his lap. Kakashi hums hungrily at the mention of her dreams.

“Do you, now?”

“Yes.” She checks her list again. “ Were you just being mean to me when you said you wanted me to yell at you over nothing forever.”

Kakashi’s hand slides from her ankle to take her hand in his, and fixes her with a deep look. “No. I wasn’t. I like that you call me on my shit. I do take you seriously when you’re mad.”

“You don’t think it's…  _ cute _ .”

“I think it's incredibly hot. Can’t I take you seriously  _ and _ be a little turned on by you asserting yourself?”

“I guess so.” Sakura wants to ask about the forever part.  _ Not tonight _ , tuts the voice in her head.

“That’s all of them.” She tosses the notepad onto the floor and dives into his arms, snuggling into his chest with a moan of contentment. “For now. Thank you for answering me.”

“You don’t want to ask about the bandana?” He squeezes her close in a two armed hug and rests his bare cheek against the crown of her pink waves. 

“Nah.” She flops her head against his other shoulder so she can look up at him. She lets one hand roam around his features, having half forgotten he’d ever looked any other way. “I figure you’ll tell me when you’re ready. I don’t need to know  _ everything _ tonight.”

“Thank you.” Kakashi blushes a little. “Do I get to ask a question now?”

“Shoot.” She feels a squirm of worry at what it might be.

“Can I kiss you yet?”

“Kakaaashi,” she whines, a little sleepy from the emotional rollercoaster of her day, the hours walking in the sun, her plummeting adrenaline after the more treacherous parts of their conversation had concluded . They’ve waited so long they may as well not rush. “I’m so gross right now, I need to shower and brush my teeth.”

He grips her tighter and lets out a low hiss, pulling her up so that his lips rest against her ear. “I love to hear you say my name like that.”

She leaves the bathroom door unlocked so he can come sit on the closed toilet and continue their conversation while she showers. 

“If this is going to be a habit, you should get a clear shower curtain,” he says mischievously, hooking a finger on her flowered curtain as if to peep in. She slaps him away with a wet hand and flicks some water at him. 

“ _ Icha Icha Home Improvement _ .”

He tells her about his business trip, he’d been flown out to give a series of lectures at a university and had stayed to talk with a publisher about a follow up to  _ Illustrating Radical Feminine Pleasure _ . 

“I have a hard time imagining you on a plane,” she admits. “Or in a car actually.”

“How do you think I get around? Floating around on a leaf?”  
  


“Maybe,” she says contemplatively. “Will you make me a toothbrush?”   
  
Kakashi plucks her bamboo toothbrush out of its holder and smiles as he eases a curl of strawberry toothpaste onto the brushes before handing it over. 

“Thank you,” she singsongs, poking a hand out to accept it. He kisses her palm, eliciting a giggle.

“Strawberry?” She can hear in his voice he’s thinking about how she’ll taste. 

He talks idly about his next book, giving most of his attention to examining the contents of her sink and bath caddies. She squirts out a handful of conditioner and works it through her pink strands. The showercurtain rustles again and she peeks her head out.

“Hey! I told you---”

Kakashi is staring up at her, eyes wide and intense, spiralling her in and making something shudder inside her. She lets out a little breath like prey that knows its been sighted. 

“That’s why you smell so delicious.” He stands to get a closer smell and sighs. “Part of it. The rest must be all you.”

“Jeez.” She rolls her eyes, trying to get herself back under control. Another second under that look and she’s going to pull him into the shower fully clothed. “It’s just yuzu conditioner.” 

She shoos Kakashi out so she can get dressed. More than a little giddy, she slips on a clean cotton dress, and after much thought, a pair of panties. She walks out into the living room drying her hair with a t-shirt.

Kakashi is on her couch, reading the book she’d picked up last week. He smiles at her and carefully closes the novel as she returns to her seat next to him. 

“It's getting late,” he says in a low, rough voice. “I should put you to bed, Sakura-san.” 

His lips are running over her damp neck, the shell of her ear, the line of her jaw. Her hand floats to his knee, the other pressing encouragingly to his hand bunching the cotton on her waist, just below the bodice of her dress. He covers her small palm on his knee and laces their fingers together. 

“Mmmm,” Sakura says, though she meant to say  _ I thought we were taking it slow _ . “Kakaashii…”

He growls against her throat. “At least let me kiss you goodnight.”

Kakashi guides her mouth to his by drawing his nose across her opposite cheek until her face is tipped towards him. Then for just a moment he waits, the air between them heady with sandalwood and yuzu and musk and strawberry. She feels his breath against her and can’t stand it anymore. She nips at him, pressing against that full mouth with a moan. He deepens the kiss, she can feel his smile as he licks the tip of his tongue against her lips and she opens wider, hungry.

Kakashi’s kiss is rough and clever, drawing her in and making her gasp. He leans back against the arm of the couch and she follows, sliding against him chest to chest without a second thought. His hands find their way to her tangle of wet hair and the curve of her hip, one thumb pressing into the bone there.

A hot coil of desire is forming in her stomach, and when she feels her dress ride up over her thighs and the denim of Kakashi’s jeans scrape against the soft skin she knows if things keep going… well they won’t make it to the bedroom. “Danger,” she mutters against him without realizing it. 

Kakashi senses it too. Without breaking their kiss, he guides her back up to sit on the couch, her legs still tangled around his hips and she  _ hmmphs _ against his mouth. Finally they break apart, gasping slightly. Kakashi licks his lips and makes a noise deep in his chest. For once he has no snarky comment. 

“Damn.” He just says. “ _ Damn _ .” 


	13. Side to Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can’t live on ramen and beer.” Sakura settles across from him and her heart flips at the sight of him in her kitchen, face and all. “You’re going to get scurvy.”

The next night she goes to Tenten and Ino’s for dinner. Kakashi is sitting on his porch reading and smoking what looks to be a very large joint when she leaves. 

“Where you headed, beautiful?” He waves and grins from beneath his bandana. She resists the urge to bail on her plans and install herself on his lap. 

“Girls night,” she says with a teasing sway as she heads towards the exit. “Don’t wait up.”

Her friends can barely listen to her story they’re screaming so loud.

“I can’t believe you didn’t bust down that door!” laughs Tenten, refilling their glasses. “I would have kicked his ass _and_ sent her packing.”

She tries to gloss over the kiss with Genma but Ino won’t let her, demanding all the dirty details.

“Was it good? Is he a sloppy kisser? Too much teeth?” She leans in without a hint of resentment in her voice. “We’re going out on Wednesday. I forgive _you_ but I want him to squirm a little.”

“It _was_ good,” Sakura admits, letting herself remember the hazy, watermelon flavored kiss, Genma’s shaggy hair tickling her cheeks. “Don’t torture him though, it was my fault. I owe him an apology.”

Ino waves it away with a well manicured hand. “OK, now what happened with Kakashi.”

She recounts their serious talk, leaving out just exactly how delectably handsome his face really is. When she gets to the part about the shower, Tenten and Ino clutch each other and scream again. 

“You _didn’t_.”

“I didn’t,” she admits. “I wanted to, but I didn’t.”

The story ends somewhat chastely. After they’d broken apart she’d walked Kakashi the few steps to her door and sent him away with another kiss, short but loaded with barely contained wanting. She’d watched him whistle his way across to his porch and settle into his chair. He didn’t take out a book, just sat contemplatively with his hands still in his pockets until he caught her looking and waved goodnight. 

“And that’s it,” she says, finally taking a pause to sip from her glass. “That’s all that happened.”

“That’s _all_?” Ino groans. “Haruno, you went from macking on this guy's bestie to getting him to bare his soul. I would have ridden him halfway around the world before letting him say goodnight.” 

“They’re taking their time,” Tenten scoffs as she clears their plates. “It’s sweet.”

She tells them about Friday and asks them to tell Neji and anyone else they can think of. 

“Are you inviting Kakashi,” Ino teases. “Or is it still not _like that_.”

Sakura blushes. “I’ll tell him it’s happening.”

When she gets home he’s still sitting on his porch, the only clue that any time has passed being an empty ramen cup at his feet.

She leans over his fence. “Hello, neighbor.”

Kakashi puts down the book and beckons her over with a single crooked finger, and she feels a fluttering tightness tug just below her belly button. Sakura closes the distance between them on unsteady legs.

“Have you even moved.” She picks up the book up off his knee and scanning the page. It’s particularly dirty—- a female farmer demonstrates the many uses for her extra large produce at a farmers market. She blushes at the blissed out and bent over housewives.

“See something you like?” Kakashi sits back in his chair, knees wide, and watches her flip the pages.

“This is really lewd,” she laughs. “Like exceptionally dirty.”

Kakashi pats his thigh and she drifts over to settle on it. He wraps his arms around her, burying his covered face in the warm crook of her neck. She wiggles into his lap, feeling for a telltale stir. 

“I’ve been in a mood.” he smirks against her ear but puts away the book. “You can borrow it tonight if you want. And we can compare notes in the morning.” 

She shivers at the suggestion. That he’d know what she was reading when she took some relief that night. Truthfully she’d been thinking about him for weeks, every time her hands drifted down. Sakura feels like her whole body is pulsing like a heart. 

“Oooo,” she sighs. “Kakashi… don’t tease me.”’

Kakashi traces her jaw with his lips, letting out a low growl along the way. His hands grasp at her thighs, eliciting a low moan, before pulling away. He leans back in his chair and watches her perched on his knees, looking flushed and just a little desperate. He chuckles and moves a lock of hair behind her ear. “How was girls night.”

The next evening she gets takeout for two, figuring if he’s off in the wind again she’ll just have leftovers for lunch. But she thinks he’ll be telling her when he goes from now on. 

Kakashi is fixing his bike in the yard, and she thinks it’s the first time she’s seen him do anything remotely like working.

“So industrious,” she laughs and holds up the bag. “I bet you haven’t eaten.”

She nods with her head for him to follow her in to her house. 

“Hmm,” Kakashi muses, wiping his hands on his jeans. “I thought I wasn’t allowed because you might drag me to your bedroom.”

Sakura shrugs, “True but I have a sneaking suspicion you don’t have cutlery or plates or possibly chairs.”

She unpacks the containers one by one and smiles to herself as Kakashi unties his bandana. 

“You’re spoiling me,” he says when she sets down a container of eggplant miso soup.

“You can’t live on ramen and beer.” Sakura settles across from him and her heart flips at the sight of him in her kitchen, face and all. “You’re going to get scurvy.”

‘Well if it’s doctors orders.” 

After dinner they settle on the couch with their respective books. 

“Do you even watch TV? I know you have one.”

“I can’t find the remote. And-- I’d rather read.”

He’s reading _Icha Icha, A History_ and she tries her best to focus on her new book but it's hard when he’s so close and warm. After a while she wiggles her toe against his ribs. 

“Hey, I’m going to have people over on Friday.”

“Thanks for telling me in advance--- how neighborly.” He doesn’t look from his book.

She pokes him with a toe. “Do you want to come?”

Kakashi looks briefly terrified but it passes, and he leans over to give her a firm kiss.”Yes.”

“Good.” Sakura snuggles down, warming both her feet under his knee. She opens her book again and this time lets herself fall into it. 

On Wednesday she comes home and Kakashi’s house is dark. She remembers vaguely that Ino and Genma are going out tonight, wincing at the memory of her performance last weekend.

She makes stir fry with the leftovers and watches a particularly embarrassing reality show. She can’t help but peek out every once in a while to see if he’s home. Sakura knows they don’t need to hangout every night but she wants the little jolt of joy and lust that she gets whenever she sees him. 

The next morning she finds a note on her door. _Went to Yamato’s, guess this is why people have phones._ She has lunch with Tsunade and gives her the short version of the last two weeks. 

“I couldn’t take all the back and forth,” her mentor sighs. “How exhausting.”

Kakashi walks down to meet her as she comes up the walkway. “I’m going to the store, can I get you anything?”

She really needs dental floss but she declines. Inside, Sakura sits at her kitchen table and makes a list of what they’ll need tomorrow and sends it to the group chat. _Whose bringing what?_

Kakashi knocks on her door an hour later.

“Hold out your hand,” he says and smirks at how obediently her palm raises. He places a fresh box of dental floss. “I’m here to make you dinner.”

“How’d you know,” she marvels a little and let’s him in.

Sakura perches the counter and watches him crack eggs and fry rice. He’s talking about his new research, his voice taking on an excited lilt she hasn’t heard before.

“Kakashi…” she says during a pause in conversation, “You don’t have to entertain me every night.”

He looks up with a slow grin. “I know. I don’t have any pans at my house.”

He plates the omurice and tops it with barbecue sauce from her fridge. 

“How’d I do,” he says, watching the first bite go to her mouth.

“Mmmm. Not bad for a committed bachelor.”

Afterwards they do the dishes together, and it does strange things to her pulse, to be domestic with him. She lets out a contented _hmmmm_. His bandana is around his neck—-it comes off now as soon as she closes the front door. She can see the twitch of his smile when she brushes her fingers against his while handing over a plate to dry.

After they cuddle together on the couch, Kakashi playing with the hair loose from her bun as she tracks down the documentary he’d suggested on Harukawa Namio.

“I thought you preferred to read.”

“I do, but this is research.” He pulls the elastic from her hair and inhaled the scent of yuzu and sweat. “Plus it’s kind of hard to feel up your girl while you read.”

“Documentaries aren’t really feel up movies, Kakashi.” Sakura presses play and leans back against him.

“This one is,” he promises with a growl that makes her whole body contract.

The film traces the illustrators career, intermingled with images of his work. Sakura can feel a hot blush working its way up her body. The women are curvy and powerful, casually crushing mens faces with their asses, portrayed in every possible scenario. Kakashi’s right-- it _is_ a feel up movie.

“Notice how gentle their expressions are,” Kakashi says professorily, his hands roaming along her body. They squeeze at her thighs and rub the tense muscles in her shoulders, card through her hair, pinch her cheek playfully when an exceptionally kinky scene flashes on the screen. He even tentatively brushes a thumb over the curve of her breast, giving an exploratory squish when she hums in assent. “It conveys their total control in the situation. They’re taking their pleasure, but it's not hasty. Even in the public scenes their domination is completely on their terms. Harukawa-sama was a master of the genre.”

“Ooo tell me more, Kakashi-sensei,” she purrs against his chest. She’s been drawing her fingertips lazily across the skin of his stomach, slowly, maddeningly tracing each muscle there. Kakashi tenses when the word _sensei_ trips off her tongue. Sakura feels something shift and swell beneath her, and the low-grade arousal he’d been building in her all night blossoms into full, burning desire all at once. 

“How’d you know,” he growls against her ear, giving the back of her thigh a little spank.

“I have a feeling about you,” she teases and stretches up to capture his mouth while the credits roll.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No notes just 🥵


	14. Everybody Here is Out of Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re going to change?”
> 
> “Of course,” he tsks conspiratorially and gestures at his perpetual uniform. “Did you think I was going to meet all your friends dressed like this?”

Again Sakura wakes up alone in the morning but with the feeling of Kakashi’s hands all over her. They’d gone a little farther than they’d meant to the night before, and when she’d found herself kneeling between his legs, palm on his swollen cock through his boxers Kakashi had suddenly sat up and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Wait,” he’d said, as if startled to hear his own voice. Kakashi zipped himself back up and swallowed her moans of protest in a kiss. To her surprise, he leveled a hot and serious look at her and asked her about her do’s and don’ts.

She laughs and blushes her way through the conversation. “You’re going to make me say it all?”

“Not  _ all _ ,” he’d sighed. “I don’t think I can take hearing your wildest fantasies right now, I’ll spontaneously combust. But we should definitely talk about our boundaries and any triggers and what’s a hard no for each of us.”

There’s almost nothing in Kakashi’s no column, and to his visible delight, Sakura’s is pretty short too.

“You’re just making me talk dirty,” Sakura sighed, hiding the bright flare of her cheeks.

“I mean I’m enjoying that aspect, yes.” Kakashi gave her a slow, longing kiss. There’s only the sound of their breathing and her little whimpers and the noise of their mouths moving against each other. Kakashi drew away panting after what seems like an eternity, licking his lips and fixing Sakura with a look like he was ready to devour her. “But consent is both sexy  _ and  _ mandatory. The more I know about what you need the better I can treat you.”

Sakura had walked him to the door on unsteady legs, every part of her body burning and shaking with lust. They fell against the wall in another panting kiss but he separated them after a moment and let out a rough laugh.

“What can I bring tomorrow,” he asked, drawing his hand one last time over the back of her thighs, her ass, the small of her back. He cradled her chin in his hand and smiled.

_ That cock and as many condoms as you can find _ , her brain screamed. “Nothing,” is what she had replied. “Just you.” 

“I think I can manage it,” he said with a last spiralling look. 

She moans in frustration, kicking away the bedsheets. She’s tried to work it out with her own fingers and palms but it’s just not cutting it. Sakura wants  _ Kakashi  _ and nothing less is going to satisfy the need pooling at the juncture of her thighs that’s starting to make it hard to think straight.

She makes a mental note to remind him that if he  _ had _ a phone like a normal person, he would have already received several dirty texts and a very private photo. 

Sakura showers and conjures him in there with her, pressing against her slippery back, hands roaming to wash and tease her. She fixes breakfast in the kitchen and imagines what it would be like if he was kneeling behind her, face pressed into her ass like a Harukawa drawing.

“Get it together Haruno,” she admonishes herself when she finds her fingers slipping under the waistband of panties while she waits for the coffee to brew. 

Before she goes to work she scrawls a note to slide under his door.  _ Tonight @ 7, can’t stop thinking about you. _

The day is a blur. Tsunade scolds her for her forgetfulness, her dazed look.

“I don’t know if you need to get laid more or get laid less, but you need to do something,” she growls, tossing a pen at Sakura’s head. “This is ridiculous.”

_ Head count? _ She texts the group as she walks into the grocery store.

_ We’re in! _ says Naruto.  _ And we got booze. _

_ Me and Yuka _ , writes Sasuke.  _ Charcoal _ .

_ Team InoTens got cups and plates _ , writes Tenten.  _ Anyone got a folding table? _

_ I will bring the joy of youth! _ Lee answers for once.  _ And ice _ .

Sakura wishes once more that Kakashi had a phone—- this time so she could ask him to help with the bags. But he’s loitering outside the market when she leaves, reading another horribly smutty book on a bench.

“What a coincidence,” he hums, snapping it closed as she approaches.

Sakura asks about his day as they walk home. She’s beyond being surprised by Kakashi’s apparent psychic abilities. She’s accepted that she’s just terribly predictable.

Naruto is already setting up the grill in her yard, Hinata is peeling corn next to a case of beer. The two men bump fists in greeting and Naruto introduces his girlfriend.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Hina says softly and takes his hand. Kakashi smiles a crinkle eyed smile and the shy young woman blushes deeply. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” 

After putting the bags down on the porch, Kakashi plants a covered kiss on Sakura’s cheek. “I’ll meet you back out here in a bit. I’m going to make myself more presentable.” 

“You’re going to change?”

“Of course,” he tsks conspiratorially and gestures at his perpetual uniform. “Did you think I was going to meet all your friends dressed like this?”

She watches him go, turns to find her friends grinning behind her.

“What?”

Naruto shakes his head and Hinata hums happily. “Nothing.” 

The rest of the group arrives a few at a time. It’s been a long time since they’ve all been together and everyones spirits are high. Even Neji looks uncharacteristically pleased. Sakura all but forgets about the steamy, bewildering events of the last few weeks. 

“Sup, Forehead!” Ino appears with Genma in tow. “ I brought a plus one.” 

He shrugs and she shrugs and it’s enough of a conversation for now.

“Both of you are babies.” Ino rolls her eyes as she loops an arm with Sakura. “Take me to the wine.” 

Kiba brings a folding table and they rustle up seats for almost everyone, Genma letting himself in to Kakashi’s for the wobbly pair of kitchen chairs he’d been keeping his TV on. 

Sakura opens the gate for him to get through and he grins as he goes past, “We good, Bubblegum-san?”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

He shakes his shaggy head, “Don’t worry—- all sides considered I think it was a draw.” 

Kakashi reappears shortly after. The average person would say he looked exactly the same as when he’d gone in—- he’s still wearing slouchy jeans and a T-shirt, and of course his black bandana. But Sakura can see he’s wearing boots instead of ratty tennis shoes, his shirt fits him well around the shoulder and chest, and there’s evidence he’s finger combed his hair into a casual style she knows most men spend an hour achieving. He comes bearing another case of beer and a large mixing bowl.

“How did you—“ Sakura hadn’t even told anyone that she wasn’t sure what to make the salad in. “Never mind.”

She introduces him to Kiba and Shino and Neji, each of whom does their best to crush his palm with their handshake. Soon he’s deep in conversation with Shino when he mentions his fieldwork on the mating habits of the praying mantis. Lee arrives with a flourish and two leaking bags of ice. He almost hugs Kakashi— “It is so good to see you again! My sensei’s beloved rival can only be my beloved rival!”

“Now I remember this kid,” he mutters dazedly as Lee sprints away to put away the ice. Sakura laughs and rests her head on his shoulder. Kakashi sighs and wraps the arm around her. 

“You’re fashionably late tonight, Uchiha,” Naruto crows as Sasuke and Yuka approach. She’s dressed for an entirely different night in wedge sandals and a shimmery dress, and she greets them with a pleasant but tense smile.

“Sorry,” she says, accepting a cup of wine from Tenten, “I was getting ready.”

“You don’t have to cover for him,” Kiba grins. “We know how long Sasuke spends on that hairdo.” 

Sakura feels Kakashi’s thumb massage her shoulder and she nudges his chin with her head. Sasuke’s face already has an unhappy slant and when he sees them it looks for a moment like he’s been hit. Then as always it passes and he gives a noncommittal  _ hmph _ and shakes his head at Kiba’s jab. 

Yuka asks for the bathroom, so Sakura leads her in and stops in the kitchen to prep the meat for the grill.

“Your place is so cute,” Yuka says when she comes back, settling against the counter. “It almost feels like you’re not in the city!”

“Thanks, it was a great find.” She tries to tamp down the anxious wriggle in her stomach. Yuka has been nothing but nice so far, and they’re just two people stuck in the same awkward situation. If anything Sakura has the lead—- it’s  _ her _ friends, her house, her ex. 

“And that neighbor guy is—-“ She makes the sound like a chef's kiss. 

Sakura laughs. “He’s something else. I love your dress.”

“Oh.” Yuka looks down at the shimmery, off white cocktail dress. “I’m a little overdressed. I had other plans—- no offense!”

“None taken,” she laughs. “Your’s look like they were a lot more glamorous than burgers and beers.”

“I do like hanging out with you guys,” Yuka offers quickly. “You’re all so sweet and … real I guess. I can’t say the same thing for a lot of my friends.”

“We like having you. I know it can’t be easy to walk into a group like us, especially with an ex in the mix.”

“Sasuke… dated Ino?” Yuka asks carefully.

“No. Um.” She's shocked. “Sasuke and I dated for like the last year…. he didn’t tell you that?”

Yuka looks momentarily stunned but she pulls herself together. Her face lights up in what Sakura would have assumed was a warm, genuine smile if she didn’t know that this poor girl had just found out she’d been chatting with her new boyfriend's ex. “Maybe… maybe he did. Either way, I’m glad we can talk and hang out!” 

She excuses herself after a few more minutes and Sakura turns uneasily back to her prep. Kakashi drifts in, stealing their moment alone to lift his bandana enough to nibble her ear.

“Kakaaaashi,” she says with a smirk, knowing now how much he enjoys hearing her draw out his name. “I’m holding a knife.”

“I know I like it.” He kisses the blush running along the opposite cheek. “Do you want me to start the grill?”

She laughs. “You’re going to have to physically fight Sasuke and Naruto if you want to touch the grill.”

“Hmmm, your ex certainly does have a stick up his ass.” She notices he conveniently leaves out his kindred spirit Naruto. 

“That he does.” She pauses, but decides she can tell him anything. “He didn’t tell Yuka we dated.”

Kakashi is nuzzling his nose along her jaw and he straightens a little when she says this.

“Yikes.” He resumes the path with a squeeze of her hips. “You really upgraded Haruno.”

Finally they pile the folding table with food and take seats wherever they can. Kakashi brings over his rattan chair and installs it at the head of the table like a throne for Sakura. 

“Lucky,” Ino scowls, leaning to whisper to her while Kakashi settles on a milk crate next to Shino to continue their conversation from earlier. “Have you guys…”

“Shhh.” She pinches Ino’s leg. Sasuke and Yuka are next to them, both looking slightly pained but making conversation with Neji. “No, we haven’t.”

Genma comes over pats Ino on the shoulder to share her seat. 

“Sakura and Kakashi haven’t fucked yet,” she says bluntly as she settles into his lap. Sasuke tries to cover a wince with a sip of wine. “Does he usually take this long to make a move?”

“Nope.” Genma takes a bite of potato salad off her plate. “Bubblegum-san is a special gal.” 

Sasuke and Kiba help her carry in the leftovers after dinner while the rest set up the table for games. Kiba drifts away when Naruto shouts for everyone to pick teams but Sasuke lingers, pretending to look at the pictures on her fridge. He smiles a little at one from the very earliest days of their friendship. Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto, 10 years old looking serious in their gi. 

“How are things,” he asks casually, lifting a take out menu to examine a class photo from high school. 

“Good.” She fixes him with an incredulous look. “How are things with you?”

Sasuke shrugs, painfully nonchalant. “Settling into the new apartment. Trying to spend time with Yuka’s friends.”

“That’s nice.” She tries to sound polite, but either he’s attempting to torture her or he’s circling some other point. 

“I’m glad you two are getting along.” He settles with his arms crossed next to her, eyes slid away from her. “You’re blundering ahead with this moron across the street.”

“Theeere it is.” Sakura closes the fridge with a little more force than necessary. 

“No, he’s nice.” His lip curls in the barest hint of a smirk. “He’s your usual type--- Kakashi looks like you picked him out of the lost and found.” 

“What is your deal,” she scoffs. “What is all this?”

Sasuke follows her gesture to his outfit. “They’re my clothes.”

“You’re like a totally different person.”

“This is who I’ve always been, Sakura,” he snaps.

“You’re so  _ mean _ , Sasuke.” She grips the side of the sink. He’d always been aloof or unemotional, but not just flat out mean.

“What do you want me to say, that I don’t like seeing you with some loser? That I think you can do better? That it hurt to let you go?”

“That last one would be a start but it’s a little late at this point.” She scowls and starts to wash dishes to stop herself from strangling him. “Did you tell Yuka we’d dated?”

“I’m not going to be interrogated by you.” His mouth is in a tight line but the rest of his face is serene, just a hint bored. He keeps his distance, leaning away from her. Sasuke smells  _ expensive _ and he put an extra dab on tonight. She tenses at the stir it still causes.

“Sasuke, that’s cruel.” Sakura crosses her arms. “ _ Everyone _ knows. She looked mortified.”

He stiffens. “You told her.”

“It's more like you  _ didn’t _ tell her.”

“You’re trying to sabotage--”

“Please.” Sakura stops him with a fierce look.

Sasuke’s face flexes, settling on a startled grimace. “What did… what did she say.”

“Know what, I’m not doing this for you anymore.” She runs her hand under the sink and heads for the door, spitefully drying her hands on the front of his checkered button down. For a moment he's not her ex— he’s just her emotionally constipated best friend again. “You’re being such an asshole.” 

“Hey!” Sasuke doesn’t follow her. 

The scene outside cools her temper instantaneously. Almost all of her favorite people, all in one place. Playing some stupid drinking game with some of Kakashi’s friends who’d wandered by to see if he was hosting that night.

Kakashi is standing with Shikamaru and Genma sharing a joint, he catches her eye with a wink when she walks out. She settles next to Tenten on the porch, tugging at her sleeve conspiratorially. 

“Where’s Yuka?”

“She left,” Tenten confirms. “while you were inside. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Sasuke comes out grim faced and makes a beeline to the cooler, turning his back to them and fishing out a beer. 

As the sun sets, more and more people show up at Kakashi’s. 

“How do they know to come if you don’t have a phone,” Ino marvels.

Kakashi shrugs, “I’ve never told them  _ not _ to come.”

Soon the barbecue has turned into a block party, stretching across the yards and spilling onto the walkway. 

“Good party.” Kakashi pulls her close, and with a motion so quick no one can catch it, lifts his bandana to peck her on the lips.

“Thanks.” She rests her head on his shoulder and sighs. “We could have done this so much sooner if you hadn’t made me hate you.”

Kakashi chuckles and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Want to sneak away? I don’t think anyone will miss us.”

Sakura surveys the scene with pleasure. It was spontaneous and lovely and joyful. Rock and Guy had found each other and were demonstrating a complex tandem dance. Asuma was delighted to see Shikamaru chainsmoking on Kakashi’s porch and had produced a pocket go board so they fouldncontine their game from that morning. Yamato is talking spiritedly with Tenten and Neji, Ino and Genma are making out like two drunk mollusks on her front steps. Even Sasuke’s mood has eased and he joins a game of beer pong, taking Hinata as his partner against Naruto and Kiba.

“Hmm,” she sighs somewhat regretfully and pulls him back into the party. She holds her hand up to Naruto to indicate they’d take winner. “Not tonight.” 


	15. Only Then I Am Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tonight though she isn’t stopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Nothing but smut ahead!!

The night they decide it’s time is no big occasion. She had spent the evening on his lap under a blanket while a rainstorm percolated above them. Kakashi is reading to her an article about erotic sculptures on Hindu temples and she slides her palm from his stomach to his waistband to the warm bulge under it.

Kakashi keeps reading, a little smirk playing across his lips. They’d teased each other like this before. Almost every night for the last two weeks she sat on his lap or cuddled against him on the couch and let her hands roam over him. They’d come very  _ very _ close to breaking several times.

“What are we waiting for,” she’d moaned once as he felt her panties soak through. “I want you so badly.”

“You’re not enjoying drawing it out?” Kakashi had licked a trail down her throat and towards the swell of her breast peeking from her tank top. “I like playing with you. And I think you’re just a little too stubborn to cave first.”

Tonight though she isn’t stopping. She slides a finger under the button on his boxers and looks up at him with dark, hungry eyes. “Is this okay?”

“Yes.” He examines her flushed cheeks and determined mouth. “Do you want to… out here?”

“For now.” Kakashi hisses as her fingertips graze over the underside of his cock. “Keep reading.”

He drones on about erotic architecture, increasingly punctuated with gasps and moans as she strokes him firm and slow. A teardrop of cum seeps out of the head and she meets his eye as she licks it from her thumb. 

“You want me to keep going?” 

“I’ll cry if you stop.”

She turns in his lap to straddle him, still holding his cock in both hands. She lays her head against his shoulder and tucks the blanket around them. If someone walked by they’d just look like an innocent, snuggling couple. 

Kakashi snakes the arm wrapped around her back under the blanket and he pushes up her skirt, rough fingertips sending tingling shivers over her thighs. She’s working him mercilessly slow as he teases at her through her panties. He reads on between low growls.

Sakura shimmies closer, until the base of his cock is pressed against her center. She bucks her hips and they both moan.

“I’m going to drag you to my bedroom now,” he sighs into her ear. 

_ Ok THIS time it's really happening _ , she thinks as he stands. She gives a little yelp and wraps her legs around his waist.

“Kakaaashi!”

“Yes, keep saying that.”

In the bedroom, he deposits her on the bed and then kneels to take off her shoes.

“Can I--?” Her hand floats down to the knot on his mask. She’s seen his face now plenty but he’s always taken it off himself.

He looks up at her with dark hooded eyes. “Of course.”

Sakura unties the bandana and lays it over the bed post. Kakashi is still on his knees, one hand on either of her thighs, staring intently at her.

“Are you sure?” He advances on her, palms crawling along the bed parallel to her thigh. “You’re ready to do this, Sakura?”

“Uhmmm.” She shivers as he noses along a path from her navel to her cleavage and up her throat. “God, yes.”

“Tell me what you’re ready for,” he demands, pushing the fabric of her skirt slowly to her waist. “Tell me what you’ve been waiting for.”

“For you, I’ve been waiting for you,” she says wildly. “I’ve been waiting for you to fuck me since I met you Kakashi.”

“I knew it,” he growls. “As soon as you started talking about those boxes.”

“How so?” 

“You looked like you wanted to punish me,” he chuckles. “Do you want to punish me, Sakura?”

She rolls her hips against his. “What do you think I’ve been doing.”

Kakashi kisses her hard, pushing deeper and rougher than he has before. Her hands find his cock again and she pumps him slow.

“What do you want first,” he asks against her ear.

“Surprise me.” She gives a soft bite to his cheek.

Kakashi grabs his bandana off the bedpost and slides it over her eyes after she nods her consent. 

She lets out a noise somewhere between a gasp and moan, fingers flexing against him. Kakashi stills her hands and removes himself from her grip. He drags a trail of kisses back down her torso, pausing to ghost his lips across her clit under her panties, nipping lightly with his lips. 

She’s really losing the plot, every nerve sparking, every sense overloaded now that she can’t see. It smells like sandalwood and sweat and the cum leaking out of Kakashi’s impressive cock onto her thigh, she can feel his hands everywhere on her at once and still needs more. Kakashi is burning hot and now her breasts are cold as he eases them out of her shirt, only to warm them with his palm and mouth. She gasps and bucks. It feels like the only thing in the universe is his breath on her body and the happy noises he makes as he explores it. 

“Kakaaashi,” she gasps when he’s licked up and down both of her thighs. “Pleeaase. You’re teasing me again.”

He hooks a finger into her panties, dragging the knuckle along the wet fold beneath them. 

“You’re soaking,” he observes lightly. “We’re going to have so much fun, Sakura.”

With this she feels her underwear pulled away and Kakashi growl against her exposed skin before taking one long, lazy lick that ends with a swirling kiss to her clit. 

“Damn,” he groans against her.

He keeps up the pace, pressing one finger lightly to her opening and laughing a little as her muscles contract to draw it in. 

“You’re really aching for it.” He presses his tongue flat against her and gives a firm suck. “I’m not even going to get to tease you like I really want to.”

“Plenty of ummm…” she forgets the word and buries her hands in his hair. “Ummm time.”

“I guess you’re right.” He presses the teasing finger in a little further. “I’m going to make you call me sensei.”

.

“I’m going to make you call me Mistress.”

“ _ Icha Icha Sakura _ ,” he grins against her belly and pushes in another finger. “I like it.”

He lets her fuck herself on his fingers while he leans away, opening the bedside drawer. “That’s right. You just get yourself open for me.”

Sakura feels herself approaching an edge she’s not ready to fall off yet, but it's too late because he’s noticed too and he’s abandoned whatever he’d been doing to rub her clit while he works his fingers between her legs and rolls the delicate skin at the base of her throat in his teeth.

“Kakashi-- I’m going to--”

“Do it,” he smirks. 

Sakura bucks and squirms against him and Kakashi tugs down the bandana to watch her eyes. Without any direction Sakura grabs it with her teeth and bites down as she moans, watching his pupils blow out completely. He shakes and growls and she knows she’s on to something. It makes her topple into the first real orgasm she’s had in months. Not a utilitarian wank in the shower, but a real,eye rolling, shaking orgasm.

He pumps his fingers lazily as she catches her breath. 

“Ready?” She whimpers a yes and he draws his fingers away. “Good.”

Kakashi strokes himself and fits on a condom, pulls her to him at the edge of the bed. He rubs the head of his cock against her clit, teasing at the lips.

“Do it, Kakashi,” she growls. It's all he needs to hear and he pushes in. “Oooo so full.”

They fall quiet as he sets a slowbuilding pace with a few slow, firm rolls of the hips. Kakashi removes the bandana from her mouth with his teeth, one hand braced against her thigh and the other tangled in her hair. He replaces it with a firm kiss, working her mouth open slowly with tongue and lips and teeth until she feels him tickle the roof of her mouth. Other than that it's just the sound of their bodies sliding together, both breathing hard and crying out softly.

“Fuck.” Kakashi kneels on the bed, pushing in deeper and folding Sakura’s legs to her chest.    
“You feel fucking amazing.” 

“Oh, shit,” she moans as she hooks her legs over his shoulders. “I thought you were all the way in.”

“Nope.” He draws out and then slowly glides in to the hilt as she shakes around him. “Do you want me to take it out?”

“I’ll cry if you stop,” she repeats and digs her nails into his ass. 

“All the things I want to do to you,” he groans. “I can’t even decide how I want to fuck you.”

“We’ll make a list,” she promises and leans up on her arms. She gives him a biting kiss and then rests her head on his shoulder to watch him slide into her over and over. 

From there it’s a fast fall for both of them. 

Kakashi gathers Sakura up in his arms and pulls her up so she’s straddling his lap, grinding his pace faster and faster until he’s slamming into her and she’s cursing and calling out his name. 

“You first,” she gasps, squeezing tight before he can protest and Kakashi’s eyes flutter as his grip tightens on her thighs.

He cums hard and panting, lets out a moan against her mouth. “Sakura…”

She feels the tension in her snap and she screams, hands fisting his hair as she rides him, savoring the feeling of his cock jerking inside her. 

Kakashi collapses against her, planting kisses along her throat and jaw and she rolls her head to the side to accept them. 

“Yo,” he murmurs, finally working his way to her lips.

“Yo yourself,” she laughs, feeling radiantly satisfied. “We should have done that before.”

Kakashi shakes his head. “Worth every second of waiting.” 

Reluctantly he slides out from her, eliciting a gasp from both of them as they separate. He rolls away to tie off the condom and clean himself up, but returns quickly to cuddle up to her. Kakashi gently pulls her shirt back over her tits and smooths her skirt. “Are you cold?”

“Uhmuhm,” she mutters drowsily. “No, but make me get up and pee.”

“We can shower.” Kakashi smooths the hair away from her face and examines her expression with pride. “If you’d like.”

“ _ Icha Icha Bathtime _ .” She begins to stir like she’s considering getting up but falls back down and brings Kakashi’s head to rest on her chest.

“Sakura.”

“Mhmmm?” She’s running her nails across his scalp, listening to the rain slap against the window. She thinks that she could stay like this forever. 

“Do you want to stay here tonight?” Sakura feels his hands flex tentatively against her ribs, a note of doubt in his voice. 

“Yes, please,” she sighs and kisses the crown of his head. “My house is too far.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well there you have it! What an insanely inspired week its been. I'm so touched by the reaction to this fic, all the people that commented and bookmarked or left kudos. I was really determined to finish it before I went away for a bit and I think this is as good a place to stop as any (for now at least!).
> 
> I hope this gives you a little bit of joy during these times! I had such a blast writing it and hearing from everyone. Knowing that my writing gave people something to look forward to, even if it was only for the last few days, was really touching!!
> 
> I guess please also go read my other fics if you are into Firefly or The Witcher 😭 because I'm pretty proud of some of them too. 
> 
> Anyway Auntie Thelma loves you, be good!


	16. Epilogue: Wouldn’t It Be Nice

Kakashi picks up a book from the weatherbeaten stack, a column of boxes he’d never quite gotten inside when he’d moved in a year and a half ago. He sighs, holds it to his chest, tries to really  _ feel _ its importance.

“This one brings me joy too,” he says finally and tips it into a fresh cardboard box. 

“Kashi.” Sakura wipes the paste of sweat and dust coating her hands on her shorts. “You  _ have  _ to get rid of some of these books, this is insane.”

“It’s my research library.” He pouts and sits down on the front steps. “The whole point of moving is to have more space for all our stuff.”

“The whole point of moving,” she reminds him, draping her arms around his shoulders, “Is for us to live together.”

“That’s right.” He lifts his bandana to peck her on the lips. An identical one is holding back her hair and he tucks a curl under the band. “You look good in that.”

“Thanks, my boyfriend has literally one million of them,” she sighs and gives him a teasing squeeze. 

“And they  _ all _ bring me joy.”

She huffs and returns to sorting through the rusted assortment of kitchenware. “I don’t think this is what Marie Kondo meant. I’m throwing away all this kitchen stuff, I have a full set.”

“But—!”

“Kakashi,” she coos dangerously. “Everything here is 10 years old and absolutely disgusting. We’re not taking it with us.”

“Fine.” He flaps  _ Icha Icha Submarine _ at her and tosses it into the giveaway box.

She rolls her eyes. “I know for a fact that’s not your only copy.”

That night they break for a shower and dinner. Kakashi massages the dust from her hair with shampoo and talks about the first time he’d sat with her in here.

“I wanted to climb in with you.”

“You didn’t exactly make it a secret,” she laughs. 

“You wanted me to climb in too.” He glides a slippery finger down her back, over the curve of her ass, and back up. “What took us so long again?”

“I seem to recall someone hiding from me.” She turns the water off and leans against him, dizzy from steam.

“Oh, that’s right.”

Over cold pizza and red wine they discuss the plan tomorrow. Asuma would drop off his truck in the morning, Naruto and Hinata had offered to help pack it up and take over a load over in Naruto’s van.

“We’ll be officially cohabiting by night fall,” he says with a smile, snatching a pepperoni off her slice.

Sakura swallows a nervous lump in her throat with a gulp of wine. She’s never lived with anyone before, had never really considered giving up her space. At this point in her and Sasuke’s relationship they were fighting constantly, never happy, and rapidly breaking apart. With Kakashi things were suspiciously good. She wonders for the thousandth time if they’re rushing it.

“Still worrying, Haruno.” His hand finds her knee under the table. “Want to talk about it?” 

“I’m just being silly,” she sighs. “I love you. I can’t wait to live with you. Even if I’m a little worried you’re going to drive me crazy.”

“I’m definitely going to drive you crazy.” Kakashi leans over for a kiss. “I love you too. I’ll try not to be too annoying.”

“You already  _ are, _ ” she replies and pulls him in for another. 

They sleep the last night at Sakura’s house. They’d already moved Kakashi’s bed to the new place and Tenten would come in the morning to take Sakura’s bedframe and mattress for her own. They’d been looking at a fold out couch for the spare room. 

“It will be my study,” he’d said on the walk home from signing the lease.

“I’m sure our guests will love staying in your smutatorium,” she teased. “I thought I was getting my yoga studio!”

“You can bend and stretch all you want,” he’d growled against her ear. “In my study.”

Another conversation half finished, another issue half resolved, she thinks as she gets ready the next morning. She’s trying not to get too sentimental— the last time she’ll brush her teeth in this bathroom, the last front yard house party, the last dinner she cooked in her pathetically small kitchen. 

The whole house was the site of the beginning of their relationship, the site of the beginning of her real adulthood in general. It brings a twinge of anxiety to her chest to let it go.

Hinata and Naruto come bright and early with coffee and donuts, help them load up the truck. Hinata gives her a long knowing hug that almost makes her cry Kakashi admires the nine-tailed fox painted in orange along the flank of Naruto's van before they tootle away, stuffed with clothes and books and a sagging couch she can’t bare to part with yet. 

“Ready?” Kakashi says as he pushes through the front door, spinning the keys to Asuma’s truck on his finger. She’d standing in the middle of the empty house, arms wrapped around herself trying not to cry. “Sweetie?”

He folds her into his arms even as she swats him away. “No no no, I’m being silly it’s just a house.” 

“It’s not just a house,” he sighs. “I know how much it means to you, what it represents.”

She sniffles against his chest. “I don’t want you to think…”

“I know, you’re excited to move in together. You can be sad to leave and happy to go.” He shifts her in his arms so he can see her watery eyes and damp nose, and kisses her deep and slow before breaking away. “I’m going to give you the best life. Even better than the one you have now. More friends, more dinner parties, more—“

“Books?” She giggles and nuzzles along his jaw.

“A lot more books.” Kakashi releases her and picks up the last bags at her feet. “Boxes of them.”

Sakura makes a noise that’s half cry and half laugh, turning for the last time to take in the empty rooms, the echoes of laughter and sex and arguments that had reverberated here. With a sigh she loops an arm in his and gestures for the door. “As long as  _ you _ ’ _ re _ moving them.”   


  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again for reading kids!! Wanted to give you a sweet lil view into the future. I find fluff kinda difficult to marshal into real storylines but if you’re looking for some insane, don’t-read-it-around-others, PWP check out my story “The List” for a bunch of non-chronological extremely porny one shots. And maybe I’ll be back with some nice, domestic, fluffernuttery soon!
> 
> Oh! And if you wanna check out some doodles based on the Neighborly verse, check me out on Tumblr @thelmathrowaway
> 
> PS-- check out "Like Real People Do" for some semi-canon KakaSaku fun!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: Neighborly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26289343) by [jennity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennity/pseuds/jennity)
  * [Podfic: Neighborly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26289343) by [jennity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennity/pseuds/jennity)




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